I held my breath for you and waited. 

But you were nowhere to be found. So I listened to songs men wrote, that women sang, about broken hearts. And I cried, because I couldn't sing-along. 

I watched a movie and learned all the lines, I'll recite them to you, when you ask me to come back. 

There was an article in Time magazine that said someone could die from not breathing.

I listened to Amazing Grace and remembered when you saved me. 

I was so grateful and you promised to stay. So, I wrote your name on my thighs. 

It was my mistake to believe you. 

No one really belongs to anyone, especially if they belong to someone else. 

Again

She asks me my name.

I tell her.

We sit quietly and watch Little House on the Prairie.

I warm up a t.v. dinner for her. She asks if I've eaten already. I tell her yes. She says that she is warm, I offer to turn on the air conditioner, she declines. She asks my name again.

The episode ends and another one begins.

I turn on the air conditioner. She says it's too loud. I turn the air conditioner off.

She asks for dinner.

I sit quietly and think about tomorrow. She says she is tired and goes to bed.

I sit on the couch a wonder where everyone went.

And then I remember that I am alone. I say my name in an empty room.

Brown skin, warm to the touch, 

soft thighs, 

my thighs.

Excitable words are all I have of you. 

Heated and devouring. 

Control and controlled, 

the binary so close to synthesis the harder I loved you. 

More you begged. 

Pleaded. 

Past tense is all I have left of you. 

Pulling turned into aching, 

Begging turned into resentment. 

Your more turned into less. 

You have become nothing, and that's all I have left of you. 

lineage

I wonder how much my mother charged. I wonder if she would fuck for food.

I wonder if my father paid her or if he raped her or worse, if he loved her.

So, I walk around making men fall in love with me and leaving them. In honor of my mother.

In homage to her broken womb.

Even though we are apart, I am her daughter.

Her wounds are my wounds. Her aches are my aches. Even if I don't know the particulars, the nuances. Blunt force emotions. Her blood, my blood.

It is exhausting overcoming us both.

And when the night is quiet, I rub my belly and whisper to my empty womb,
"I'm sorry."

To my daughters not born, to the unnamed hurt.

There is a rhythm to my heartbreak. A slur to my speech.

An ache to my exhaling.

Even though I didn’t love him, I waited for the love to catch.

Walked around without a coat on and touched my eyes every second I had.

Let his love pour over me, in me. Let his love invade me, surround me.

I waited for his love to catch.

Long conversations with my soul. But men have loved me before.

Loving me has never been enough.

Sober

Sober.

Whispering the words. Five letters, two syllables. Two vowels, three consonant.

Sob
Rob
Bore
Robes
Robe
Sore
Ores
Sore

Sob.

Pulled over to the side of the road. Cried, screamed, raged.
Palms sweaty, mouth dry, tears, quickened breath.

Stop.

Name all the colors you see around you.
Name all the cities in California.

Slowly.

Sober.

There is a place between Southern and Northern California. 

Limbo. Purgatory. The Central Valley. 

Not dead, not really awake. 

A soulless place. 

Where my life was small and my voice quiet. 

And you stood faraway and waited for me. 

Underneath red and orange sunsets I lifted my head from my work, and there you were, silent and watching. 

In the night you came to me, and traced my body with your fingertips. 

And in the space between night and dawn, that blue hue that fell over both of our bodies. 

You asked me to marry you. 

I could not have written you. And in my dreams I never dared.

Your love is not a gesture, it is my destiny. 

I will never be the same.