Sometimes the radio speaks to me. Free Falling, Silent All These Years...twice. You have to know California radio to know how rare this is. When I got in the car, turned on the engine, and heard Running Up that Hill, I said aloud, Are you kidding me?
If I only could make a deal with god, and get him to swap our places.
I feel brave and at the same time buffeted. Bruised. Gray on the outside. At twenty, I started to bruise easily. I have ideas and no language. I feel like sea foam spread by boots. I feel like I am wasting my life, ruining my poems because I wrote them.
If only you had written them--whoever you are. I would whisper to you how. I mess it up. I am not a good vessel, wound and wound and wound, too tight. I would be a better ghost. I would come to you in dreams, and you would wake thinking they were yours except for the long gold hair across your chest.
Oh, I wish I wish I wish I was born a man so I could learn how to stand up for myself.
I can't say anything without covering my mouth.
Lose control, the workshop says. Let go.
Okay.
Day three of not drinking: after the reading, she comes up to me and says, Do you have a book? You have a book.
Yes, I say. No, I say. I don't know what to do, I want to say. I need your help, my eyes say.
I want to help you, her eyes say.
We walk away without speaking.