will you give me what i want? an armpit to put my face in - wet cheeks - a dark scented place to cry? will you open your arms when my mouth bows down before you, a watershed of everything pent up in me, glass and wire, anger and fear? will you pat my hair when i do good or hold my face to keep me centered when i am falling out of touch? will you smack me out of love? will you kiss me when you hate the way i talk to you, just to shut me up? will you pull my hair when i ask you to, harder when i say harder? will you hold my hand while i am driving on the freeway, crying, away from the last place that dealt me a blow, even if it meant i would swerve, and scare you into thinking we were going to hit the median? and when we do, and your car is wrecked, will you laugh with me about the blood coming from my forehead after smacking it on the steering wheel and make up cockamamie stories with me about avoiding a french drunk driver, to sneak out of higher insurance rates?

will you put the kids to bed at a decent hour and will you find my peppermint foot cream and will you rub it in secret spicy places? will you work me up just to bring me down again or will you leave me behind while you travel on? will you smell my hair or any part of me when i have been hiding in a blanket cave for a week, nursing wounds you had no part in causing? will you let me fall on you, drunk, at 3am and stinking of cigarettes i'll deny smoking? will you take my kisses both chaste and sloppy and never pretend at your feelings? will my random passion scare you or pull you together, will the way i eat annoy you, will you know that when i use my foot to slam the toilet seat down in the middle of the night it means i've fed up of you leaving it up on me, will you help me put on gloves when my hands are trembling too hard in the snow, will you bring each cup of coffee as you would have an engagement ring and will you melt when my eyes swell with gratitude for small things? all small things, are they important to you as they are to me? will you find meaning in my prepositions, will you make up dreams about us, and write them in your secret online journal to your friends you've never met? can i be your pretend girlfriend even when i am your real girlfriend? can we have stories and drama and can we have long boring nights with reruns on the tube? will you let me take pictures of your body, all over, and will you show me your favourite things to do with playing cards?

when we're camping will you come with me to pee in the woods in the middle of the night, holding the toilet paper roll and shining the flashlight where i tell you to? will you help me rub anti-itch cream on the mosquito bites on my ass? will you scream if i catch my hair on fire but then when it's out talk about how cool it looked when it first went up and help me make blue flame from hairspray? will you go through my things and throw away the pictures i never talk about but you know that i hate? will you think i look beautiful, in the middle of the night, and my mouth is twisted in pain and my body is betraying me and my mascara turns my face to decay? will you fall down with me and scrape your knees and stay down, while i bleed beside you, counting blades of grass, and the ants i killed in my descent?

will you tell me what to do with myself when no one else can? will you cage me, but let me free when i need it, and will you lead or follow? and can you?

i dreamed i was in a beautiful black and grey marble bathroom. it was huge, the size of my bedroom or bigger. the lights were dim, and the giant tub was a jaccuzzi and burbling and sizzling and candles were burning and it smelled like rich dark scented oils and i was in nothing but my panties, preparing to get in the bath. it was summer's night, the window was open, dark green curtains blowing in a gentle breeze, and i had had a few snorts of brandy, with another perched on the solid edge of the tub, waiting for me. i was perfectly alone.

then the curtain blew a little harder and noise came in, the noise of a public swimming pool packed with teenagers. i tried to ignore it (as if it were an inconsequential fly buzzing around me) and move into the bath, my back to the window, my big ass barely covered by my underwear, and then i heard the unrelenting and evil braying laughter of teenaged boys. i still tried to ignore it but i realized i did not, at that point, feel comfortable taking my underwear off anymore. i started to climb in the tub with it still on, and the laughter got louder and more insistant and meanspirited but i tried to tell myself it wasn't directed at me, it wasn't directed at me, it wasn't directed at me. but then i was in the tub, and sank into the water that was only a moment ago so inviting but now felt like nothing but a way to hide, and turned to the window, and the boys were there looking in, wearing their cute little surfer shorts over their chiseled and tan bodies, pointing at me in my lumpy mostly-nakedness, laughing in derision and disgust.

and i put my face up to the dark marble ceiling and howled in pain and sadness. it woke leon up.

broken hearts are for jerks

i ran backwards through the morning;
from toast to coffee
from slippers to bare feet
from shafty light through slatted blinds
to sunset at 6am.
i stilted moved,
impossible robe flutter
from arms to floor
and body turning
down to bed
and head to pillow
and hand to heart
and eyes to closed.
breath deep to shallow
dreams rage to stillness;
in backwards morning i run
you are for the finding,
you are for the having.

small

all i ever wanted was to be
small
and cared for, watched after, worried about
and every shoulder
open to me
and every hand
in my hair
all i ever wanted
was to be
small.

small to fit in the crook
small to fit in the palm
small to fit in the heads
of angels
small to fit
in a candycake dress
sugar dumpling
frosted face

all i ever wanted was to be
small
and safe and tucked in and mused over
and every eye
blinking for me
and every nose
in my letters
all i ever wanted
was to be
small.

small to sneak in windows
small to sneak in hearts
small to sneak in beds
of lovers
small to sneak
in a smoothline tussle
slick shouldered
hair puller

all i ever wanted was to be
small
and wanted
in my smallness.

i had a dream last night that i had to take the kids to this other kid's birthday party that was being held in a partially underground bunker that was filled with mud. i mean, mud up to my waist. there were two picnic tables, one for kids to sit at and one for grown-ups to sit at. it was terrible trying to slog through all the mud and get to the tables, made worse by the fact that laurel couldn't walk through it at all because she is so short she would have been submerged. it didn't matter, we were all completely covered in gunk by the time we made it. there was nowhere to wash our hands and i was very worried about the children having to eat food with mud all over it. i think the birthday kid was having some kind of monster truck show party, and everyone was really excited, and the other parents didn't seem bothered by the mud. but i was bothered, oh yes.

noah

laundering poetry through his guitar
he used each delicate morsel i threw his way
to repair a rung on a ladder
that was crumbling in age.

i thought of him as i thought of my tricycle:
young, for youth, and distant; a patina
that never allowed my fancy
to shine beyond a pixel, or few.

how surprising to find in the winter sunlight
each bound kiss and holding hand
stirred curiousity that until now was only
fleeting technological fun.

his patient ministration, his minstrel-ations
patched hairline crack after splintered rung
until the ladder, more solid than before,
supported his weight.

and when he put down the guitar
and he started to climb, hand over hand,
i teetered at the top, warming in winter,
surprised to realize: i was waiting.

last night i dreamed we were face-to-face
and you would bestow upon me firm-lipped kisses
one after the other.
i would try to make you pause in each embrace
force your lips to remain
against mine
bite, slip of the tongue, breath
hands on cheeks
eyes locked
and none of it worked.
my heart was so filled with longing
and sadness
it grew to magnificent proportions
a pain, an unnerving pain
in head and chest
as you laid empty kiss after empty kiss
upon my full lips
and my heart burst in their wake
and i woke.

unfurled in all her longing and
hair done up in ribbons,
she moved through each moment
like fronds in the pool.
when questioned so thoroughly
her eyes cast (unwittingly)
spells through a mired mind
and devoured every last of your breath.
who could open umbrellas in wind or
in sun and who could put a single arm
around everyone, but the girl who
stole your last step from the dance?
in pearls of spring drops, she sees him again
and sink, oh sink, when her light shines away
from that puddle darkly forming
at the ends of your toes; all tears.
sink, oh sink, in deep utter shame
her mouth could move mountains
but she does not speak (or even look)
to the goats in the crags anymore.

i dreamed i was trapped in an abandoned mansion with endless halls and locked doors and boarded-up windows so there was no escape. i had two cats following me around, a ginger tabby and a white siamese. we got so hungry we had to eat hand lotion. it was from lush, and tasted exactly like it smelled. i was crying while i put it in my mouth and tried to swallow it.

i dreamed of my grandfather last night.

we were in a strange house, but i think it was mine. it was small and old but well-kept and beautifully furnished. everyone was getting ready for a big exciting party somewhere - maybe new year's eve. i was panicking because i felt like i had too much to do and not enough time, plus, my grandfather, who was supposed to be dead, was sitting on my big brown overstuffed velvet couch, and i really wanted to talk to him. he was simply dozing and waking up occassionally to watch television, much like he did on the second-to-last trip i took to ontario to see him before he died. anyway, i kept trying to put on make-up and screwing up with the colours and where it was going. by the end of my attempt to "do" my face i had purple eyeshadow all over my forehead and i was hating my hair (in fact, i really am hating my hair right now - the bangs and colour, anyway...) i also kept thinking of cds i had to take the party because the hostess claimed she didn't have any so i was trying to stuff my purse with them, and the food i wanted to bring. finally i managed to get almost everything together and everyone was waiting in a big truck outside for me. i was pulling on my boots and then i was rushing into the livingroom to say goodbye to grampa. it was then i realized that once i left for the party, he would vanish from my life again. so i tried to calm down and take my time, but it was hard, with people honking the horn at me and yelling for me to hurry up.

i took his big hand in mine. it felt cool and smooth and i saw the age spots. he was looking at me calmly through his big glasses. i told him i loved him and that i was sorry to be going. he put his arms around me and pulled me in close and spoke quietly in my ear. he said, "you don't have to worry about me. you have to worry about you, and your children, and your future grandchildren." he had me pressed up so hard against his body that my face was mushed into his shoulder and i started to cry. he continued talking, "all my life i felt i had to prove something to people and now i realize that the only obligation i had, really, was to think hard about what was right for my children and grandchildren, and fulfill that. all i had to do was do right by them. the rest of it didn't matter. and i wish i had done a better job at it, but i didn't, because i was working hard at other stuff, trying to prove things to the world. i didn't really enjoy doing a lot of the things that had to be done right by my children and grandchildren so i just didn't do them. don't make those mistakes. no matter how much you don't like it, if you know it is the right thing, you owe it to those beautiful kids to do it. you have an obligation." he kept talking like this for a long time in a very soothing and deep voice with me squished up against his boney body, and i kept crying into his shoulder, crying all my eye make-up off. it was like he was looking inside me and seeing how i have been feeling lately, so dark and depressed about my obligations that i am having problems fulfilling. i just cried and cried and cried. i woke up crying.