cheshire girl

Ow! The way she strides across an ocean in paralyzing beauty!
The way she digs a thick hip into each of her steps
I’m gonna fall over myself following her.
Woo, mama! Her stunning gaze is a binding contract!
Lids rimmed in dark black coal and languid blinks
I’m ripped apart by her backwards glance.
Shee-it! Look at the way she leans across the sidewalk!
The hollow under her arm is shady, smooth, cool
She’s perfected the art of infatuation.
There! See how the city pauses around her; her body wades
Through a sea of malcontents, a Cheshire Girl
Her grin…oh! The state I’m in.
The state I’m in.
OH.
The state I’m in.

i dreamed last night that i woke up this morning and decided to just drive down to LA for the last day of the gathering.

i got there in a few hours, and it was being held in this big old ramshackle house. it was literally filled with mamas, inside and out, and i couldn't recognize anyone and no one recognized me, until i walked into a sitting room and spotted three mamas eating some food and talking on a couch, and one of them was [info]ubershti! we recognized each other right away and she jumped off her seat and ran up to me and we hugged and started crying, we were so excited to see each other. suddenly, though, she recoiled from me, with her nose wrinkled up, and i realized that my breath smelled really bad! i was mortified and excused myself to the bathroom where i was going to brush my teeth. she had her nostrils pinched shut and was waving me off.

i got to the bathroom and peered into the mirror and opened my mouth. suddenly i remembered that several months beforehand, when i'd been visiting friends on a remote island, i'd developed tooth pain and a pseudo-dentist had given me a pair of dentures to wear so that chewing wouldn't be too painful (and he told me to go see a real dentist as soon as i got back into the city), and i'd forgotten completely that i'd been wearing them this whole time-months and months--without taking them out and cleaning them. so while this big mama party is going on outside the bathroom door, i very slowly and carefully pop the dentures out of my mouth and discover, to my horror, that the inside of them is literally filled with fuzzy black and blue mold, and that my real teeth are all rotting and falling out and my gums are bleeding and oozing pus everywhere. three of my top front-ish teeth are completely gone, and only big deep dark, smelly holes are left. i quickly rinse out the dentures and i have to pry some of the mold out with my fingers, and i slip them back in, but now they feel uncomfortable and make me talk funny. i go through the rest of the party like this, and i can't find ubershti again, anywhere.

tyger tyger

i was stirring soup. the children were climbing on the couch, laughing. i hear keys in the lock and leon opens the front door. "hello, dear," he says, "i brought home something kind of interesting." i hear an odd noise, like a small, deep engine with a little snort at the end and the hairs on the back of my neck stand up immediately. i hold my hands to my breast, and peek my head around the corner to where leon is standing, with a fifteen foot long bengal tiger by his side. its head is the size of jupiter, its yellow eyes roll around to look at me curiously. its huge pink noise wrinkles up and i see teeth; big, long, tawny-coloured teeth, as long as my index finger.

i back away slowly, out towards the diningroom, calling the children to me. but they are too excited, they have seen the tiger. they want to pet it, kiss it, ride it. leon is laughing, and pushing them away gently. the tiger looks hungrily at them and i beg leon to keep the big cat away from them, but he waves his hand at me scornfully, like i am being irrational.

frustrated and frightened and not willing to take responsibility for his recklessness, i storm up the stairs to our bedroom. he calls after me, "i had to bring him home, honey! the zoo closed! they were going to put him to sleep! this is the only way he can live!" i feel heartless and angry at him. how could this tiger's life mean more to him than the safety and sanctity of our family? i slam the bedroom door and curl up under the blankets, the pillows over my head. i don't want to hear the tiger anymore. it's rumbling voice, it's occasionally snarling, all of it, terrifies me.

i wake up in the morning, and leon is fixing breakfast for the children. i ask him where the tiger is, worried it is running free in the backyard. he says he came to his senses and realized it was a bad idea to keep him in our home, and that he went up to the wooded parkland a short distance from our house before dawn, and released him into the trees. i tell him that although his heart is in the right place, he did a stupid thing. the authorities know he adopted the tiger, and if there is an attack on another person or their dog as they walk the wooded trails, we'll be held responsible. he seems unaffected by this news. he doesn't think the tiger is potentially harmful. i wake up worrying.

moth queen

there's something different about the humidity in the forest. in the forest, humidity hovers around you at eye-level, smothering your nose and mouth, filling the air with the dark, dank, sexy smells of mulch and rainforest and mud and puddles seething with breeding mosquitos. the sweet, slightly astringent perfumes from gaultheria shallon and cedar tree fronds hanging down into your eyes; the daisies bobbing along the sides of the almost-overgrown logging road looking so bright and playful but letting off their fecund stench, all of this, filling the damp air. you sweat as you trudge up through the brush. fallen trees litter the ex-road; sometimes you are forced to go over them, and sometimes under, and the whole way the boy is ahead of you. he doesn't notice things like humidity or the beautiful sylvan entropy or mosquito bites. his eyes are on the prize: the glimmering meadow.

it's like the forest spits you out. you skid/tumble down the final stretch of trail and its salmagundi of scents, and there you are, blinking in the sudden and wickedly clear sunlight of the meadow. as far as your eye can see is waist-to-armpit high grass. you rub your eyes, maybe. it looks like the last five miles to avalon would, with the sun beaming down, and the breeze pushing the rushy stalks over on themselves in waves that make the whole landscape look sentient, look like it's breathing. there's no describing this without at least admitting that the wildness of the place, while overwhelmingly beautiful, cradles some intimidating undertones in it's hay-scented reality. what lurks in those grasses? snakes and mice and spiders and wasps' nests, no doubt. here there is no path, no overgrown logging road to simultaneously loathe and feel grateful for. here you must move through the grasses, unguided except by your own nose, which tells you the sea is only over the next rise or two.

the boy has no trepidation. he plunges into the grass, his head nearly disappearing from view in the golden shield it provides, and you have no choice but to follow. the ground is uneven, and you stumble, but still, the breeze, and still, the humidity, this makes it all a tiny paradise. and then, while he is calling out to you from a few yards ahead and to the right, completely unseen, you notice.

with every step each of you takes, a cloud of tiny white moths explodes from the grass, rising up around you and above you like silvery smoke, like glittering diamonds in the sunshine, like feathery flowers startled off their stalks. the boy is still ahead of you, laughing now, his voice becoming more distant, and you can keep track of where he's moving by the clouds of moths bursting up from the ground and fluttering desperately away from the noise and movement you've created. you feel like a lady, a magical lady, as you move through the whispering grass and flickering white air. your cloak is made of tiny, soft, white moths. they rest in your hair. they kiss your cheeks with their wings. they breathe away the humidity from your neck and backs of your knees. they love you, because you are their gentle moth queen.

last night i was single because i had suffered the devastating loss of my husband to a bus accident. i was crying a lot. i sat out in the backyard, on the muddy ground, with my back resting against the deck and the wake was going on around me. people were milling everywhere but nobody was really talking to me. i think i had rejected everyone. my neighbour came up to me and said he was also mourning because his wife had died that morning. we cried and cried. our children were crying. we were in no state to comfort them. other people had to do it.

someone handed me the phone, and it was steve burns. he said he couldn't talk long but that he was very sorry for my loss and that he thought it would be a good idea for me to take a trip to visit him when i was feeling a bit better. i said thank you, and hung up.

mickey rourke showed up at the funeral. he didn't want to hang around being melancholy, though. he told me that it would be in my best interests to get up off the ground and go for a walk with him. it was twilight. we snuck away from the wake together. we were walking through downtown. he wanted to take me into a bar, but i wasn't in the mood. he put his arms around me and kissed me on a street corner. he said that if i wasn't in the right frame of mind now, he knew that i would be soon, and that he would come back to me and love me forever when i gave him the signal that it was alright to do so. my stomach was in knots and i couldn't imagine ever loving anyone but leon ever again. as he walked away from me to go drinking on his own, i was left alone on the street corner in the dark, surrounding by hundreds of people having fun, and i vomited into the gutter, puking out misery. i couldn't remember how to get home. i wanted everything to be different.

thankfully when i woke up, everything was.

why do you love me?

you love me because i sweated through, grunted through, hollared through, moaned through
labour pains and yawning cervix and yes, you saw me tear
you love me because when it's time and money runs out i make meal after meal
from grated potatoes and weeping onions and i'll keep going
until all the dried beans have been soaked
all the tomato paste we bought on sale
all of it is digested and resting sleepily in the ocean
you love me because i cry when someone hurts my feelings,
you love me because i'll let my hair hang down over your face
and you love me because i like to bite your chin
you'll rub my feet
you'll tease my button
you'll hold our babies in your deep, dark loving
and you love me because i'll let you
touch my belly.

bits of fluff blown in

the tiny seam of my existance, that seals me up against the world
popped
and now my stuffings are coming out in clumps
puffy, they smell like sawdust and hayseed
and freshly mown meadows

the needle and thread are lost, i can't repair the rip, i'm wilting
stop!
don't collect the fluff and hide it in your pocket
matted, they'll compress like cheap pillow fillings
and begin to reek of your body

the frayed edges of my seam have spider-threads, twisting against the wind
chopped
i use my teeth to rip them out; i'm tired of looking worn
cram the stuffings back in, if you really love me, dear
or i'll float away

major tom

I had moved the day I first met him so my muscles ached and my head was stuffed with the indignity of dust,
And even not on drugs he looked skull-cracked, you know? That kind of hollow head gaze.
But he had a glamour that shone past the silver metal buckle on his leather cap
"Yeah," he said, when we were introduced,
Slippery eyes gliding down my body, head cocked back like a trigger
And the ubiquitous cigarette dangling from his bottom lip.

"Tom's crashing a party in the West End," they said, laughing and nudging me,
I felt adolescent and unsure because my friends from before weren't like this;
This rockstar experience these people were bent on having every night
"Yeah," he said, which I took to be an invitation,
His skull-cracked face bland and filled with electricity at the same time
With the ubiquitous cigarette dangling from his bottom lip.

They had a van, a minivan, that they rode in, rattling and careening through narrow downtown streets
And nobody seemed to care where the gas money came from or how many beers he'd had;
Glittering, hollow-head Tom always drove, though I don't think it was his, really.
"Yeah," he said, when I asked if he liked girls,
Because in 2 hours after four beers he'd taken on a silent shine, appealing to me,
That ubiquitous cigarette dangling from his bottom lip.

When the party was cancelled, we drove to the woods, the van shaking and creaking, everyone silent in their seats,
He drove hunched over, his hat nearly in his eyes, concentrating hard on the dim beams of our headlights,
And the ground underneath rolled past rocky and jounced me against the window, screeching against branches.
"Yeah," he said, whatever small talk I made as his co-pilot,
And it was that feeling you that you have when you are small next to someone, one who has
An ubiquitous cigarette dangling from his bottom lip.

Being young and ridiculous I enjoyed my smallness next to him, his monosyllabic answers to my proddings, his
Deep eyes always shaded by his shiny leather cap, his lazy shifting and consistent blindspot checks,
And pulled over at a cliff with a black mirror ocean crashing beneath, we found ouselves alone in the van.
"Yeah," he said, when I leaned in close to his shoulder.
He never kissed me, not until after we'd been doing it for 5 weeks--I shit you not--and all because of
That ubiquitous cigarette dangling from his bottom lip.

btvs dream

i was on patrol with buffy, who was also babysitting a 9 or 10 year old little girl. suddenly we were ambushed by werewolves, who snatched the little girl and dragged her off into the woods. buffy and i followed, kicked some werewolf ass, and took the girl home. buffy told me to stay there and watch her while she slept while she finished her nightwatch.

spike showed up at the front door sometime later. i invited him in and we started drinking wine. i said, "so, you wanna have sex?" and he said, "sure". we kissed passionately and he felt me up. i said, "wait here," very huskily, and i went upstairs to make sure the little girl was still asleep and to change into something "more comfortable", and he waited downstairs for me. we were going to do it on the couch. it was very very exciting for me. boy, was i disappointed when the little girl was sitting up in bed, wide awake. i said, "can't you sleep?" and she shook her head no. i sighed and said, "okay, then, come downstairs and i'll fix you a snack, maybe that will help you relax." she started down the stairs a little ahead of me. i was still carrying my wine glass and feeling a little drunk. suddenly she bent over, still on the staircase, and grabbed one of my ankles, and pulled my leg out from under me so that i started to tumble down the stairs. i yelled, "what the fuck?!" as my head contacted the staircase and wine splashed everywhere. at that same moment i heard spike in the livingroom, fighting with someone or something, and glass breaking. the little girl snarled and attacked me and i broke the wine glass against her head. she yelped and started to run away. i stood up and ran after her, and in the livingroom i saw spike fighting with a dark haired woman. "do you need help?" i asked, and he shook his head no and yelled, "go after the girl!" she had run out the front door. i dashed after her, and found her cowering under the bushes outside the house. i could hear that inside, spike had subdued the dark haired woman. i grabbed the girl by the arms and dragged her back inside. "what did you do that for? we are trying to help you," i said. in the living room, spike had tied the woman up and left her sitting on the couch. she looked supremely pissed off. "that is my daughter you are mishandling there," she said to me, "and you took her from me earlier tonight, too. i just want her back."

at that moment, as spike came to stand beside me and hold my hand, both the little girl and the woman turned into werewolves. i looked into spike's eyes as he said, "baby, we're screwed."

and then i woke up.

my strange life with you, cloistered and vapid, became a part of my identity.
i didn't notice til it was gone.
i didn't notice til it was gone.
vague anticipation; each moment it seemed something stranger would become real.
i felt so sad when it went away.
i felt so sad when it went away.
each day i slip into worn-out shoes and wander further from our connections.
i just can't stand the silence.
i just can't stand the silence.
like a child i believed things would never change, like cycles and seasons.
forever waxing, but never wane.
forever waxing, but never wane.
loss is something i've experienced before, but repetition doesn't make it easy.
the hole takes a while to fill.
the hole takes a while to fill.