How much I aspire to be cool and collected, contained. But this skin is too thin. She barely holds me in. Sometimes I wonder if she even tries. I think she’s up to something else sometimes, conspiring with my aching knee and the way I bleed. And bleed. And with this shaking hand. To this tentative form I might complain, why do you betray me? But while I am mostly dumb, even I can recognize the wrong in that note. Of all her acts, betrayal of my life has never been one. She’s like an excited child with something just made and far from ready to be displayed to any standards of the moment, but she doesn’t know this like she doesn’t know sleek or cool or style or mood she is tone deaf to the codes of any given art and she only wants to give me––
to give me away
like the child with construction-paper hearts, fresh cut in love and decorated with such glee that the glue hasn’t even dried yet and the glitter is falling all over the carpet, and she wants to to pair these with flowers she found on the side of the neighbor’s apartment, the ones she doesn’t know enough to call weeds––and she is so eager to give them away––
like she is eager to give me away
to anyone who is
near, like Here!
Like, Take this! It’s for you!
And I sit here, cool only when I keep her from the assembly she wants to give me to, in love––the hot, messy, extra, weedy, bleeding abundance of this embarrassing form–– knowing that as soon as we go out there she is going to try it again.
And I hear.
the hot, messy, extra, weedy, bleeding abundance of this embarrassing form … love this!
: ) Thank you, Amaya
The first part of this reminds me of a saying “That shit gives me the sweet ass.”My wife used to say that when something upset her a special kind of way. Great post!
Oh, I absolutely love this expression! I may have to borrow it : ) Thank you so much.