Advice for Former Selves
Burn your speeches, your instructions,
your prophecies too. In the morning when
you wake: stretch. Do not complain. Do not
set sail on someone else’s becoming, their voice
in your throat. Do not look down your nose
at a dinner party, laughing: If only they didn’t
have so many children.
Revision is necessary. The compulsory bloom.
When you emerge with crystals in one hand,
revenge in the other, remember the humble
barn swallow who returns in spring. If not
for her markings, another bird entirely.
Ego
I once had a boyfriend who would not let me
watch him eat. He did not want me to see him
grind and swallow, gulp and guzzle, suck the
marrow from his teeth.
He did not want me to see him need.
Not Like Other Girls
Not with that loose demeanor, your
chilled-out tone, the way you do not
care if he does or does not call. You can
keep up. Speak with self-assurance. Run
with the best of them. You are what we call
a sweet enigma, all dreams and bottle caps.
No lisp of weakness on your tongue.
No, you’re not like other girls, he says,
beaming. Praise for all you’ve left behind.
Twenties
I found my first gray hair at nineteen, slept with her son at twenty-one. For months I ate nothing but beans and cotton balls. For years I did nothing but yawn. I will never be as young as the night I put on a long red dress and danced in the street with you. Some things we don’t remember; some things will always taste the same. First—the thrill of fast cigarettes. Second—the significance of signs. Once I kissed a girl in Jerusalem, all legs and cherry lips. I did not take her number. I did not know how much I’d long to hold her in my arms again.
College Boy
You brought wine and a grin that said
most beautiful girl. And I drank while
you watched (while you sat there and
watched) my whole mouth turn to slurs,
to a slick open wound. To a place for
your unraveling.
(Did you know when you bait a deer
it’s called a violation, but when you poison
a girl it’s called a date.)
My roommate watched while you
carried me, limp and sleeping, up
carpet stairs.
(What if this is what I wanted?)
In the morning, you asked if I was
sleeping. As if my clothes still held
me. As if I’d ever been awake.
First Love
You were the Eden of my youth. All
sand and sun, cerulean eyes. A paradise
with limbs. Together we went climbing
on the edge of rocks (on the edge of any
thing).
Do you remember my sister’s laugh? The
Chevy’s smell? The way we cried when they
pulled his body from the waves?
Sometimes I imagine what it’d be like to
show you I’m alive. The thrill of it. The sharp
inhale. The nerve exposed. The bone.
Girls’ Night Out
In restaurants we argue over who will
pay even though the real question is
who will confess their children are dull
or their marriage has holes at the knees.
We order french fries, salads, and brie.
Hold wine to our lips. Pull truth from
our bags that we kept all along.
She wonders—do you remember when
I cried in the cab. Wore that shirt with
the sleeves. Left him alone in the rain.
We do, we do.
Moon Song
You are not an evergreen, unchanged
by the pitiless snow. You are not a photo,
a brand, a character written for sex or
house or show. You do not have to choose
one or the other: a dream or a dreamer, the
bird or the birder. You may be a woman of
commotion and quiet. Magic and brain.
You can be a mother and a poet. A wife and
a lover. You can dance on the graves you dug
on Tuesday, pulling out the bones of yourself
...