put down the mirror and pick up the phone..

( wrote this well over a year ago. )

I'm sorry.
I really wanted to be your girl.
and I tried..
to curl into your lap, let my head tilt back and rest
on your long, heavy arms.
Yes, heavy can mean strong but sometimes
heavy is just..heavy.
The weight would irritate and too soon I'd slip out of your well-intentioned grip,
We both knowing that a real girl
always wants to be held.

There were times when I thought
Yes
I can do this
Put me in Spring's yellow dress
I thought maybe my sharp-edged frame would flesh out and jiggle
there were times when I even managed to choke out a giggle
and tuck my fraudulent feelings into a glass slipper.

But the black
the Black
always came back
the hair dye and fishnets
band t-shirts and cigarettes ...my boots begging for a lacing
my black boots stretching for a stomp
I'd pull them back on and swagger around and
Poof
your Sweetheart was gone

gone to corridors that must be explored alone and guitars pregnant with the promise of a fuzzbox drone...for there are monsters to be made, Love.. and dirty deeds to be done (dirt cheap) I can't explain the sullen puddle of beer and jukebox metal I'm in when I turn off my phone.

Maybe it's the lack of dolls as a child
the chemistry set I got instead
the Freddy Krueger poster hung above my bed
where there should of been New Kids.

I'm sorry. I really wanted to be your Girl..
but these trappings of gender are a mystery to me.

But surely...
there is the seedling of a Mother in me
see the same gentle bend in the neck?
Pure Madonna.
My arms can hold a being like that..
you can see it in the way I pet a cat
and whenever I have the chance to make a child laugh
I feel like God.

But
the sound of keys jangling
quarters on the floor and whiskey on the desk
Eyes that stare off too often into a spattering of too many possible futures
The clench in my hand
The door slam..
Absolute Father.

* * *

We tear ourselves up sometimes when we look inside too much and there we are
in a hallway of mirrors..can't see anything but our own funhouse innards..
Where does it all come from? These archetypes looming over Mother Father Girl Boy Lover Independent Doormat etc..
The walls so tight its no wonder we turn away running screaming "that's not me! oh god, that's not me!" of course it isn't, dumbass..nobody fits in there at all
touch the statues and see they are wax. We get so obsessed trying to figure ourselves out that we forget to listen/see/breathe in the people we love and because we make them into strangers we paint them into enemies and then..suprise!
we are alone with our own repeating boring reflection.

"You, who never admitted a public grace
I, who timidly took and timidly gave
We of the half-dark who were unbrave"
-Sandra Cisneros