An Air of Skai

[A Fleeting Scrap of] Self

Licking lily of the valley scents

Slurping sunburnt horizons

Water, water, water cities

Babyhood

Tickling silk

Archipelago dotting black beauty

Grace grasping curved birth-place earth

Childhood

Wave, wave roughhousing

Tumbling, home in chaos

Slipping into salt

Adolescence

Pooling to fill in where we forgot to smile

Land of ten thousand lakes lapping up sorrows

Thimble sized dimples piercing razor sharp shoulder blades

A poke from each previous tenant of the womb that was once home

A lesson in resilience

Reconciling big feet and flared lashes

Thrashing, thrashing, hold still, Honeybun

Waiting will fill

And pins and needles are only one sided mind games

Flicker, flicker brashly abolish finger nail polish

Twinkle, twinkle little girl how I wonder who you are?

Synonyms and cinnamon swirling sweetly

Toes and elbows always at odd ends

The odds and ends drawer always was the favorite

stacked high with holy trinkets unsortable

                sort of a crime

Flittering across cloud nine

Soaking in champagne baths

And boa constrictors bind limbs

Hissing fairy tales to comprehend

Dead bolting death in leather compartments

                Unhinging jaws

                Unbuckling bras

Leap, leap, leaping into the arms of the headstrong

Dipping toes into the thoughts of the long gone

Spoon-fed a cherry of pop culture

Pop pop, pop pop

                popcorn and bullets

Lipstick roaring defiance

Or compliance; blow kisses, baby

Or blow minds, lady

Or blow boys, tramp

Or blow a steady stream of air, ma’am

Damning dame

Damned devil

Dance, dance, dancing disco inferno

Infected the mind

Sweat and bass distorts the view

Beats convulsing within, without

stranger danger subsided

even without extra substances provided

although contraband and favorite bands go hand in hand

Swirling particles

                Swinging physical laws, ethical cause

Where’s a pen? Where’s a page?

This tabula rasa is getting full again

Trying to keep the riff raff out

Face the fact

The riff raff is the Elmer’s glue holding your glittery, second-grade-project self together

Wrapping hips and heat in the loaded gun of squeaky beds

Bedridden baby, sleep more, get well

Bedroom eyes sublime

Bedding boys is game

Subletting blame

Avoiding fame

Baring breasts is a thrill

Baring burdens, count the till

Baring teeth, in for the kill

Bare feet in backyards

Boots in blueberry floored woods

How much wood would a wood-chuck chuck if a wood-chuck could chuck wood?

Sleazy, easy can’t compare with the motherfucker cheating at Parcheesi

Corrupt morals

Currency makes the world go round

Currently stilled ‘cause the economy’s down

Except this is still a dizzy planet

Excellent excuse for another drink

Contend with the bartend

Lined up like pretty props, hands callously wrapped around the next waist in line

Assembly line girls,

Swapped Rosie’s cause for showgirl pride

Switched sturdy for svelte

That isn’t sexuality, it’s for show

Not enough to call them hoes

Pink shapes where skin caught your ahhs and ohhs

Waiting to blossom into tomorrow’s bruise

dental imprints mark the forearm,

you said be quiet

swallowed myself,

and swallowed the universe, stuffing my face

regurgitate perfection in its place

fixing space

between continents, lovers and thighs

Abide the rules of playground slides

                Wait your turn, feet first, wave at mom from the top

                Don’t ever let the youthful rush stop

what You are like

I have found what You are like

melting Popsicle

complete with sticky Fingers

licks licks licks

arriving at Nothing but

Cold

and Sweet

and Stains

drips drips drips

Lips part to winter

and I wither

and Dye rings my Lips

so I naively believe myself Pretty

this flavor is not a taste but a Color

like You

Navy Blue

or Twilight

or Ink lining my Wrist

like all those moments when your Brow furrows and I’m no longer Your Yellow

and when we aren’t in passionate fits of Fuschia

no, the Blue we become when

I am just not Sunshine enough

when I stumble atop a pedestal of Stars

each hand torn from the perfection of Heaven

Brighter and Bigger and Better than I

I’ve never liked competition

but We melt into this Blue

this is, and We are,

a Dream within a Dream

Looking

I wish you wouldn’t look back when I look at you

                I’m penetrated by blue

I am

                Whimsical wisps wanting

And you have to go reminding me of tangibility

                Of reality

And this isn’t like you

                Laughing and poking

This is you looking at me

                Have I ever looked at you looking at me?

                                Or let you look at me looking at you?

I don’t know what you’re seeing

                That’s what forces me to break away

                                Realizing you could be disappointed

I don’t know why I want it

                I have the good sense to know I shouldn’t

                                And not to act on it

But I’d like to curl up with you

Eventually you approach me and I’d like it if you stayed

You’re not heavy on me like other arms

And I wonder if for every pair

There’s the heft and the bearer

And I’d say sorry for the strain

But I don’t because you wouldn’t understand

And I couldn’t explain

Still You

I wonder if I dipped my toe

Just ever so slightly into your soul

If the sheen would be silver

If you let me read your palm

Could it be?

I was wrong all along

That devious smile melts

With me in mind

Your eyes are darting

No longer, I’m found

“You’re fine”

I’ll coo

All the okays

And pretend it’s true

I daydream and daydream

But you are still you

Yo Se Mañana

I’ve had to say goodbye to a lover before

            But not like this

                        We are in transit

                        We are rushing

                        We are late

            What’s new?

A Mexican and the only Swede in the world with a malfunctioning internal clock

            Wind whips

            I pray

                        Probably to whatever god your mother gave us a blessing by last night

I am busy

            Fast steps

                        Don’t feel

You said, “Try to remember you have a boyfriend before two a.m.”

            Try to remember?

                        Try to forget

The magnitude of our love takes up the majority of my consciousness

            Around the sharp vertices I shove cotton pads of small talk

                        Try to laugh and smile and relate

                                    And be everything anyone bargained for when meeting me

“Dance with me,” You demand

            Your hips swaying in little shapes of exoticism that frighten the xenophobe in me

No matter how green your eyes or pale your skin

You are not white in your lightness

Spanish is your first tongue, dialects and slang of Mexico, Spain, Cuba, Venezuela

            “I am a citizen of the world,” you once told me

I am white in all senses of the word

            The pink in my cheeks speaks to all shouldn’twouldn’tcouldn’ts pulsing through me

            The Nordic shy tells me to decline

            The American pride insists I do

But you take my hand

            And I fumble

            Feet everywhere

            Hips nowhere

            And arms dangle

I am white white white

            In that I am awkward

            In that I have to swallow the syllables of your second last name

                        And regurgitate them measuredly

            I pick up the words you drop hastily

            Short and hot

                        Coño

            I imitate, a toddler to her father

            It carries all the red I need to throw into the world for a moment of disdain

                        I stubbed my toe

                        I spilled my drink

                        You a lay a cold mano on my back

We walk

            “I wish we were naked in bed so I could-”

                        Tell me how much you love me?

                        Make me bite my screams into my skin

                                    Blood trilling when my voice shouldn’t

            “-put my freezing hand on your back”

In these moments of tear lined solace

I laugh

            Once again you are giving me what I need

                        Like I have struggled and failed to do for you

                                    “If it’s too hard for you, tell me now”

                                                Like I could back out

                                                Like we would drop this and not shatter

                                    “You’re only nineteen”

                                                It is a diagnosis, an accusation, a threat

                                                I want to be more than just nineteen with you

                                                I want to be novia and sleeping and perfection

I’ve never been good at having my long limbs bound in marionette strings

I loathe the tangle but you just want to know

I’m home. I’m safe. I love you.

            And I am, so I do.

                        But it’s not home, it’s empty.

“Eleven days,” you say

            We will spend an accumulation of hours together

            between my doting on best friend

“Three months,”

            You will graduate and I will be there

            In a sundress and a smile

“Three years,”

            I will be free of academic obligations

            Something like an adult

            We won’t be bound to anything but the whim of our conjoined adventurous spirits

You teach, teach, teach me

            You tell me that the lone freckle on my right breast is a lunar

            The smattering across your shoulders are pecas

            I point out the words I know pollo asado, semaforo, dedos de pies

                        You laugh laugh laugh

                                    sí, mami you say

                                    or niña bonita

                                    or amor

                                                I call you what I know

                                                            Snygging

                                                            Älskling

                                                            Love

Yo no se manana, I hum                                                       

            During dishes, in bed; absentmindedly

                        You agree

                        “You do not know tomorrow”

                                    I do

                                    Tomorrow

                                    I will still be mourning

                                    Waking alone in a tear drenched pillow

                                    The soggy imprints on my cheek will paint me older

                                    I will be sore and I will send love in the little ways I know how

Dear Lover (1)

Dear Lover,

Remember me?

We were friends in eighth-grade at the painfully awkward age of fourteen. Well, painful for me.

Look, I’m sorry. I know I’ve said it before since then, but your ears were muffled with contempt and my words slurred with confusion. I knew what I did was wrong but I couldn’t really explain why I did it.

I was so scared. I wasn’t supposed to feel that way about you. I wasn’t supposed to like what we did so much. I couldn’t parade it around as practice, not even in the private confines of my mind. I loved feeling your body against mine, your soft curved body. I loved your mouth, so warm and wet on me, always moving perfectly. I loved how private it was, our touches purely ours, the kisses a secret actually kept. 

I liked it until I got scared. I liked it until I realized others might have to know. That if you liked me you might not just settle for cuddling too closely under the covers while we discussed boys.

Did that hurt you? God, I was so ignorant of your emotions, such a bitch. I talked about boys all the time. Why would I kiss you, then flirt with him? I had something to prove. Obtaining a boyfriend was all the rage. Kissing girls was not yet the thing to do.

And now? Now it is okay to kiss girls; if you’re drunk at a party and there’s a crowd to impress. If you’re shot gunning smoke or you’re craving the attention you so rightly deserve. But I don’t desire this. I’ve never wanted a girl like I wanted you. Maybe it was because I hadn’t yet learned the correlation  between the term ‘desire’ and heat trickling through my abdomen, hadn’t learned to steer it in more simple directions. All I knew was that I needed to be ashamed.

I didn’t mean to out you. That wasn’t the intention. I was scared and young, not ready for the implications of your poetry, not ready to be held that closely by a person who also revealed her deepest, darkest secrets to me. I was only fourteen.

Even now it sounds like a frivolous plea, the thing I cling to because there is nothing else. I fear I stole something from you that was never mine to have. You unveiled something in me, awakened the woman within when my hips and breasts sprouted and I was unsure why. You answered my questions with caresses and kisses that the puberty books never seemed to cover.

I think I killed the same thing in you. I cradled it and subsequently choked it. Frightened by the monster I had created, frightened by myself when I was with you.

I’m sorry.

            I hope you don’t remember me,               

                        Skai

Morning After Bath

I throw myself into the tub.

I attempt to pull the lever with my foot. Success.

The warmth encompasses feet first. Soon it will spread. Soon my hips, belly, breasts will share in the pleasure. My knees and shoulders will not. I remember how I hardly fit in a tub and shove the sour tangibility of the notion away.

I am small, like my worries. Soon mom will be in to shut off my personal waterfall. Soon dad will lift my slippery body into a towel (I’ll squirm but never slip). Soon it will be time for lullabies and kisses.

But it is not evening, I am not small.

The tap runs as urgently as I did from his bed.

I turn it off with super strength toes

I was furious. Why didn’t I matter?

I am washing away shame and attempting to soak away the headache, as if the alcohol’s residual toxins are coated across my skin instead of within the folds of my brain, as if dehydration can be cured through osmosis. A couple Tylenol and many cups of water will cure the ache, but the shame?

I wanted to tell him that he is wrong, that I am not disgusting.

But here I am

                w a n t i n g

                                o  n  l  y

                                                t    o    d    i    s    s    o    l    v    e    

Waters of Me

You are innocently egocentric

I want to bathe you in the waters of me

Teach the trivialities;

the shape of my taste buds

I swirl in different ways

And chuckle morbidly

You cannot fathom a function

Not programmed to suit your needs

You cock your head

and I cock my tongue

Easy now, he’s just an egg

I want to explain the ways of the world

Dunk you in my waters

Shock you into heliocentric realism

New perspectives are scary, but brighter

I’ll fill you with omniscient light

Enlightened with equality

Wise beyond your genders’ capacity

I want to drown you in the waters of me

until you understand that I am God

Chill you into the theology

Shaking and shivering, praying

but only ever to yourself

Dripping in the waters of you

is God too

A Belated Introduction

You told me that I danced with every person there. Naturally. I dance with strangers, get the boys on the fire escape to vie for the honor of bumming me a square, which lucky guy’s got a light?  I chat up the bathroom line. Flirt equally with the pretty girls and guys and pair them to dance. I kiss someone a foot shorter than me. I don’t see you during the duration of the party even though we came together. I don’t notice the music even though three bands play. On our way out the door I tumble down a flight of steps then laugh. I lay my head in your roommate’s lap and sidle closer when he slings his arm around me. I chat on the phone with your friend, my voice just subtly hinting at everything I have to offer, you take the phone back, “Yeah, I already have…She’s wearing my coat right now…”. I giggle into your roommate’s thigh. This is not a single night’s worth of cheap-liquor induced behavior; this is me.

I am not the girl who doesn’t get to come. I am not wet, this is not sexy. Friction, friction, hurt. Blood. I give you my mouth instead. You want what I have deemed forbidden. You come near where you shouldn’t. Inequality is wet and resentment is hot. I flatten myself for the second-best of a half-hearted embrace. I slowly slope into you, forced under the heavy darkness of sleep.

I wake to find you playing the guitar in your striped t-shirt and boxers, a frayed bit of cloth hugging your wrist, foot bobbing. I’ve awoken in someone else’s fantasy. You are a flavor of perfection I haven’t requested. Still, I want you. You leave your love for me; your fingers are less tender along my skin. I am not afraid to remind you that you know what I need. But where ever you broke me before, I break again. “There’s blood. That’s disgusting”. I am white hot. I am up, out of the peaceful cocoon of blankets and limbs. I whip up my skirt, snap my bra, tug on my shirt. Swallow the acidity boiling within me. I hear you, confused and pleading. Have you tasted my toxic hatred yet? Drink up. I am not this.

I go home to headache and churning belly. I let my anger steep in the lukewarm bath. I lay with wet hair. I awake in a cloud of fuck yous and I’m sorrys. Who is this?