act your (r)age

lol @ maybe walking to yesler tonight to watch a poetry slam
wish me luck on THAT
i need to buy pepper spray like two months ago 

“at the end”

blackcatswithburningeyes:

there are ants crawling up and down my arm
and they feel like your fingertips—sliding up
cold skin, leaving ghosts behind, until I flick
them away and then it’s like they were never
there at all. like you were never there at all.
which you weren’t. I would have known.
I made it all up and I’m sorry, because I wanted
you; I’m sorry, because I was afraid. but
aren’t I always? I play the same damn story
over and over again. it’d be a dangerous game
if it weren’t so safe. I want you. I dream about you.
I’ll never tell you. if you touched my skin
I would push your hands away while all the while
I am begging in my blood: no, darling, don’t
leave me; I promise this time you can kiss me, you
can run your hand up my thigh. but you can’t
hear my cells. fine. theirs are the words of the dying.

sumwhitebitch:

I’m going to shake you off.

I’m going to pull you out from under my skin.

Seven layers deep,

I’ve been picking this scab for far too long.

sumwhitebitch:

Repeat
          after me:
I will not bite.
                  I will not chew.
I will only
             swallow the whole. 

sumwhitebitch:

Disproportionate
is the rhythm
of one person fucking
while the other is making love.

lathyrism:

i.

scheherazade
dirty valentine
little beast
seaside improvisation
the torn-up road
litany in which certain things are crossed out

ii.

visible world
boot theory
a primer for the small weird loves
unfinished duet
i had a dream about you
straw house, straw dog
saying your names

iii.

planet of love
wishbone
driving, not washing
road music
the dislocated room
you are jeff
meanwhile
snow and dirty rain

family dinner

queerbuttons:

kate asked me to come over
to her childhood home
to meet her parents
and join their family dinner

i kept thinking, am i the type,
to bring home to mom and dad?
i am self-conscious
and i’m strange
and i wouldn’t let my daughter
date a person like me

but she insisted
that they’d love me
and they’d offered me a seat
at the head of the table

to talk about myself
and answer questions about church:
i went for 13 years and decided i hate liars
and politics:
you’d have to be a sociopath to be a good politician..

her father had a deep guttural chuckle
with an aging rasp from 40 years of
the same brand of cigarettes
sitting in my front shirt pocket
and i could tell he approved
in his odd, silent way

her sandy-haired mother called me
by the name
of her daughter’s ex-lover
and i couldn’t tell
if it was deliberate

but i didn’t mind
because she smiled so sweetly
and i’ve never been able to read a woman
beyond her smile
but i’ve always known
when a woman liked me

i looked at kate
and she was watching her mother and father
so closely that i thought
she may have seen something
that i missed
but then she turned to me
and smiled
and she didn’t stop
‘til we escaped to the upstairs
to fuck like teenagers
in the old bedroom
across from her folks’

Rough Draft: Paper Babies

sweetwhatsername:

My boyfriend sends me a text that says,

“When we have a daughter, can we name her Marble?”

Its not the name Marble

Or the daughter

It’s the WHEN

That pulls me record scratch stopped in the middle of a crosswalk

That same week

My roommate breaks up with his girlfriend because

“there was no point in stretching it out”

He wants kids one day

She does not

I consider the man on the dating website 2 years ago telling me he could not wait to meet me 

Who within an hour cancels our dinner plans 

when he notices that my profile says I do not want kids. 

He’s not wasting a perfectly good dinner on my condemned and empty hips.

I named them Sylvia

My period is late for the first time since I lost my virginity

My boyfriend and I go to CVS to buy a test

He asks me if it’s a girl can we name her Erma after his grandmother

I ration a little of the blood I am trying to channel down to my uterus to my cheeks 

and laugh for the first time in a week.

They don’t make Hallmark cards for your first pregnancy scare

No one shows up with a cake 

and balloons

and gifts to celebrate your continuance of not being a mother

I think they should.

I am registered at Target 

After watching a friend’s kids while he handles hot pans in the kitchen 

he slaps me on the back and says 

“you’re good at this. You should have a couple.”

As if this is a compliment

I smile

because I know he means it to be a compliment

I name that one Harold

The hour long argument with the bossy girl at a party

after I say I would have my tubes tied in a second if I could

She slams hands on the table sure I will change my mind

Desperate for my biological clock to sync with hers.

Rosemary.

My boyfriend’s hat size is XL

I have to special order the fedora as a Christmas gift

My pelvic wall winces at the thought.

Unbeknownst to my boyfriend

I have named the hat Fenwick.

I am in the room when my best friend of 15 years gives birth to her third child

She tells me that contractions feel like being attacked by a wolf from the inside out

By the end there is so much blood I am riffle loaded 

and looking for the beast that did this to her 

I spoon ice chips into her mouth 

and try distract us both from the impressive number of stitches going into her vagina

It takes me nearly a month to hold the baby

When I finally do I check him for fangs

And fur

And claws

Despite the normally taken precautions

My period is late for the 4th time since I lost my virginity

We have evacuation plans posted like fire drills in the medicine cabinet

If its too late for plan B

PLAN C=

Join the Roller Derby

My uterus does not quiver at the sight of fat cheecked babies discovering their toes

I do not touch pregnant women’s bellies and coo

I think that shit is mad creepy

I love children

but have no desire to baby proof my home

I own and like owning breakable things

I am and like being the one who breaks them

I name each piece 

Magda

Zora

Finn

Jack

Iris

Adah

There is this knowledge that he and I would make beautiful babies

He would make a great father

I would-despite my own protests-make a really good mother

There are the pregnancy dreams

There are the holding hands to belly 

and wondering what an answer would feel like

There is sadness in knowing I will not be that piece of miraculous for him

or with him

There is a strange and unexplainable guilt for wanting none of it.

This I have named

Marble.