I asked “When you told your friends you don’t love me anymore, how did they feel?” and you said “Not surprised.”

///

Three days later you posted a photo and your friends were like “You’ve never looked happier!!!” and they were right.

///

My friends don’t ask me where you are anymore because they know I don’t know.

///

I guess we were ships crashing in the night.

///

So now my memory of you is like money in a glass case in the sea: beautiful, untouchable, distorted, seductive, sinking. …

This Is Us

1.

When you were 15, your father tore your baby pictures like old receipts. The ones in frames he set beside the dumpster. He put on his favorite record, made your brother a tuna sandwich. Whistled.

Ten years later, a man called you a canary in a cage.

Said, No one knows the bird is starving if it doesn’t sing.

Funny, isn’t it?

Woman:

If you must scream, scream beautifully.

Whistle.

2.

There is an alligator in the bedroom.

You found it there like a rug when you changed the sheets this morning, while he crawled from the bed to…

This Is Us

Her anger filled all space,
expanding like thick grey smoke,
rainclouds building,
brimming with thunder,
a silent stagnant mass growing,
crackling across waves,
lit up by sudden flashes
ringing loud across the sky,
rumbling then exploding as it must.

Her anger skulked like a black cat,
fur set on end by ghosts,
unseen enemies,
fluffed by fear, hatred, fury,
always ready to spring;
like a porcupine, round-backed,
hiding soft belly flesh,
quills quivering against the world,
pricking itself from the effort.

Her anger filled the house like a small scared child, hunchbacked, curled into the smallest corner, seething to itself…

My very first kiss
with someone other than grandma,
mummy, daddy, my niece
or the cat,
was with the other “poor kid”
on a scholarship to our posh school —
a nice boy who also felt he had something to prove.

It came in the form of a dare
roared on by rugby boys he needed to like him,
and netball girls I needed to like me,
on a coach returning from skiing in France —
one of two school trips
my parents made themselves afford
in the seven years I was there.

I knew none of them liked me…

This Is Us

All the lost things we ever had
are somewhere still,
present, existing,
even if we can’t see them;
a comforting thought,
like believing in God,
or that people never really die.

All the lost things we ever had
are somewhere still,
under beds, between train seats,
in gardens, beneath paving stones,
in cushion stuffing,
gutters, washed out to sea,
growing into coral and tree roots.

All the lost things we ever had are kept carefully by the ocean like a mother in an empty nest, waiting for our return — flip flops, bottles, clothes pegs, juice cartons, buttons, glue —…

This Is Us

They always die too young,
looking half their age,
hope smoothing worry lines,
trust lifting wrinkles into a smile,
the glint of their regal chins,
the energy of their stillness,
the unfairness of it all,
transforming us into
superheroes, leaders, artists, writers;
fire and fear and fearlessness
running up and over our edges
like lava vomited from volcanos
deep with sorrow and power.

They created countless kings, when they stood brave and tall, showed their faces to us all, held unwavering arms high, spoke words more eternal than their lives could be, vibrating like tuning forks held in thin glass…

This Is Us

Last night, election night, I stood on the precipice of today and embodied every inch of my being. There I was at the fence peering in at the White House while Beyoncé’s Freedom played behind me, wondering how many more moments I will get after this one. I wonder how many people out here voted for liberation. And liberation from what and for who. On my hand were five stories of love in my life I had written before I arrived so I would remember why I voted and who I voted for. …