On Wearing the Bottoms of my Trousers Rolled
And I do grow old
The place I am, the rush of the past catching up in a breath and the oblivion of the future widening out ahead of me like blue, blue sky
The point.
The silent spot.
How time accumulates to show me a moment where it seems to take forever and forever and yet,
Ten years ago is yesterday
And here I am.
My mother,
Herself set sitting folding laundry smoking cigarettes
A solid circumference of wisdom in her body
Just in the story it tells
Used to tell me with great urgency not to furrow my eyebrows
Taking a long drag from her Virginia Slim,
Because I would someday get wrinkles between them in a deep and concentrated Y
She told me to put tape there, it's what she did
Her soapbox moment working up, pointed fingers for emphasis
Standing up then sitting as a tirade worked out of her in a storm
We can never have anything nice, she'd say
Don't let yourself go, don't settle like I did
Help signals sent out from her body in flashing dark reds and a color I can't describe
Her points so fervent,
As if the years of heroin use would dissipate and never wrack her body with the agony of muscles and nerves crying out from misuse
Wrinkles between the eyebrows, that's what's important,
Maintaining appearances. Help. Help. Help, I can't take care of myself, help.
And here I am.
A metaphorical extension of every heaving push each woman in my ancestry gave
A symbolic toil of every man's brain
Cardboard and flapping, the rules they each made
Of gender
Of thought
Of craving
Of escape
Every day and year, a brush stroke.
Physically, creases form where tape never sat.
Every hour and glimpse in the mirror I see my face start to love gravity more than resilience
Little,
little swirls and whirls like a pool of water that moves slowly and is reticient to smooth
Gathered around my tear ducts and nose hairs
Mother, my eyebrows are furrowed, for I am looking into the sun
The chord which connects what's between my brow bones follows down my spine
Into a story that one who focuses on appearances
could easily miss
And in missing
Become lost
And here I am.
Little agonies.
How small,
how petite,
how strong my body
in terms of how it looks
Blows against the soft pallete of my brazen history
Appearances
Working its way into my dough like knotty old hands
Molding me to give any kind of fuck about how it looks
How it looks!
How it looks.
Doors and hinges which seek to bar me from my intimate apparel, my human life worn through and through
Every day a surprise to see if my lips will pucker deeply with lines all around,
Or if my jaw will sag with jowls
Or if the spot between my breasts will imitate the Y between my brows
Evidence.
Receipts.
Footprints.
A story that cannot be read. A story that is only mine.
And even if my name were known,
It could only be manufactured to spread
It could only be made false somehow in amplification
Without a thought of farts or shitbreath,
No, we are to look like angels for the public!
Nobody poop!
I am what I do. I am how I live. My life is gigantic. My body is my lovely vehicle.
And here I am.
And pain, which is a gift,
Which alludes to centers of my energy which need attention.
Which creaks and calls, sings to me of ways I've sat too long, a life well lived, worn through
We keep our stories in our bodies, and it tells us what parts of it hurt
My uterus, a place I never tarried in my younger years
is loud now after the zygote of a baby which passed through,
And through me.
Like a wind.
It passed loudly with colors and lights.
Its voice low and urgent within me, my denial of it a ghost that I've come to love like a companion
It passed and nobody knows the name of him except for me.
For he is mine.
And my uterus holds the story.
Even when I forget, since he does not exist.
Here.
But I am.
Aging is precious, it is terrible, it is everything.
It tells us we are here. Still. For a short while.
Passing through the rooms and hallways of our own storehouses or vehicles,
The heart here fluttering,
The feet with an itch,
pinpoints of motion and stiffness
Raw aching of sex and seething numbness of unexpanded desire
Why let my voice run shrill in a hustle rush to explain my existence
I crease, and I ache, and in darkness and silence, my energy hums
And here I am.
The place I am, the rush of the past catching up in a breath and the oblivion of the future widening out ahead of me like blue, blue sky
The point.
The silent spot.
How time accumulates to show me a moment where it seems to take forever and forever and yet,
Ten years ago is yesterday
And here I am.
My mother,
Herself set sitting folding laundry smoking cigarettes
A solid circumference of wisdom in her body
Just in the story it tells
Used to tell me with great urgency not to furrow my eyebrows
Taking a long drag from her Virginia Slim,
Because I would someday get wrinkles between them in a deep and concentrated Y
She told me to put tape there, it's what she did
Her soapbox moment working up, pointed fingers for emphasis
Standing up then sitting as a tirade worked out of her in a storm
We can never have anything nice, she'd say
Don't let yourself go, don't settle like I did
Help signals sent out from her body in flashing dark reds and a color I can't describe
Her points so fervent,
As if the years of heroin use would dissipate and never wrack her body with the agony of muscles and nerves crying out from misuse
Wrinkles between the eyebrows, that's what's important,
Maintaining appearances. Help. Help. Help, I can't take care of myself, help.
And here I am.
A metaphorical extension of every heaving push each woman in my ancestry gave
A symbolic toil of every man's brain
Cardboard and flapping, the rules they each made
Of gender
Of thought
Of craving
Of escape
Every day and year, a brush stroke.
Physically, creases form where tape never sat.
Every hour and glimpse in the mirror I see my face start to love gravity more than resilience
Little,
little swirls and whirls like a pool of water that moves slowly and is reticient to smooth
Gathered around my tear ducts and nose hairs
Mother, my eyebrows are furrowed, for I am looking into the sun
The chord which connects what's between my brow bones follows down my spine
Into a story that one who focuses on appearances
could easily miss
And in missing
Become lost
And here I am.
Little agonies.
How small,
how petite,
how strong my body
in terms of how it looks
Blows against the soft pallete of my brazen history
Appearances
Working its way into my dough like knotty old hands
Molding me to give any kind of fuck about how it looks
How it looks!
How it looks.
Doors and hinges which seek to bar me from my intimate apparel, my human life worn through and through
Every day a surprise to see if my lips will pucker deeply with lines all around,
Or if my jaw will sag with jowls
Or if the spot between my breasts will imitate the Y between my brows
Evidence.
Receipts.
Footprints.
A story that cannot be read. A story that is only mine.
And even if my name were known,
It could only be manufactured to spread
It could only be made false somehow in amplification
Without a thought of farts or shitbreath,
No, we are to look like angels for the public!
Nobody poop!
I am what I do. I am how I live. My life is gigantic. My body is my lovely vehicle.
And here I am.
And pain, which is a gift,
Which alludes to centers of my energy which need attention.
Which creaks and calls, sings to me of ways I've sat too long, a life well lived, worn through
We keep our stories in our bodies, and it tells us what parts of it hurt
My uterus, a place I never tarried in my younger years
is loud now after the zygote of a baby which passed through,
And through me.
Like a wind.
It passed loudly with colors and lights.
Its voice low and urgent within me, my denial of it a ghost that I've come to love like a companion
It passed and nobody knows the name of him except for me.
For he is mine.
And my uterus holds the story.
Even when I forget, since he does not exist.
Here.
But I am.
Aging is precious, it is terrible, it is everything.
It tells us we are here. Still. For a short while.
Passing through the rooms and hallways of our own storehouses or vehicles,
The heart here fluttering,
The feet with an itch,
pinpoints of motion and stiffness
Raw aching of sex and seething numbness of unexpanded desire
Why let my voice run shrill in a hustle rush to explain my existence
I crease, and I ache, and in darkness and silence, my energy hums
And here I am.