I have not climbed into bed with a lover in 9 months;
A pregnancy’s worth of consideration, extrapolation and intellectualizing.
It has not been this long since I was 16 and deeply, deeply hurt.
In nine months, I have not stared at a blank page, I have stared at the shape of my lips in my darked-out word document
It is much different.
There might be no words, but there are thoughts,
I am thinking about auto-portraiture
A dear, dear friend of mine told me to sit in front of the mirror
And I have not listened;
I sit in front of my computer.
My MacBook Air, which holds way more fragments of my productive personhood than I may actually understand.
I no longer climb into bed, bleeding from my liver, heart and eyes to write a poem in 1,2,3s
No poem bursts into a cathartic orgasm anymore,
Instead, I go flying over a rented electric bike, bleed from the tibia and feel more alive than I have ever felt.
In the cover of night, I become eye
I watch shadows over lilacs and wind in dying magnolia flowers
It feels like I have finally understood why I am pulled to images
Why microwaves are just so much more than a metal box that heats my food
But a portal to self-understanding in waves of melted chocolate, exploding marshmallows and tiny tin fires.
I wrote about microwaves so many years ago, and I sat in fields of misunderstanding and rumination
Portals, portals, portals
We are no longer allowed metamorphoses.
I breathe three times in G minor, and I am bound to be the girl who sang misery.
You push, shove and hang me in the square,
Sentenced for metamorphosis.
My body is the altar of your city – no modernized dance steps can convince me otherwise –
I still have the muscles grown from running in heels to convince your tongue that there is power in the passage of time
It is the slickness that pools between us, it is the tendons in my knees straining when I prepare to jump into the arms of a beloved
Auto-portraiture is a game we play, my eye, my past and I.
