EMPTY HOME

“big girl. big-bodied girl halving herself in the kitchen sink. i bend and bind like my mama taught me. all red writhing acetone, all plum primp beauty lines the moon-year just as frantic the last. i see the fat in my own flapping, i look twice at the body, something white and unfamiliar. i writhe all lace-laying ladies as i slam the rib back into adam’s chest. i give god what he wants. i bend over at the knees, pink clatters in the mirror, thighs touching the bare of flush and flutter. coughing up last year’s legs, something smelling of vomit and smoked meat. i count my fingers and throw the rest in the bathtub. the moon says i am lush or something larger than this, god tightens his fist. swell after me: they tell me GIRL and i clap back WOMAN. girlhood is of the loudest of sounds. i hear it clamor and clash like braids in a fistfight. yellow heat falls around the body, scattered slut slicks back her hair and parts her lips, a man bites down on the seeds of a pomegranate somewhere hovering in the woods. cloth gathers and the curtains close, my eyes sharp against the trees. i don’t know how to open my legs without finding my body naked and waiting on swing sets. i mean borrowed in the goddamn street. fleshy and sanctified i stand between god and some sort of decaying mass of lust, an unforgivable heavy-lipped excuse of skin. but i carry fish hooks under my dress, i collect embroidery needles and poke and prod just like mama said. i singe and flash like some sort of animal. hark! mad woman in heat! backwater girl knots cherries in her mouth and spits them out in your hand. girl half-lit and terrified. girl as an excuse. girl better used as a gun. i heard once in a dream that soft comes from between the legs but that is not why it is beautiful. it is hallowed because woman declared it so. i burn in fields, i burn in goddamn fields. man shapes a weapon from his own bone. i throw my mother’s china and set fire to the curtains. i chant GIRL GIRL GIRL in my mother tongue. touch me again and i’ll use my tender as a weapon, i’ll fill the whole sky with the back of my thighs. i can hear you talking, talking with your mouth your whole goddamn mouth and here i am littered with woman, blue and spilling over the bed. mama! i said i fear men who don’t cry more than i fear the blinding wrath of god. i’ll say myself in a language you can understand. i’ll spit and smear and ram my fists into fishbowls, sharpen my teeth in the bathroom mirror. i’ll wipe my lips against the welcome mat, make love to the river and drink straight from the bottle. oh baby i’ll bite my tongue when you learn how to make yourself smaller. turn yourself into a fist and swallow your own blood, call yourself pretty for me. lick your knuckles clean. oh and big girl doesn’t ask permission from her mother. i unfold your fleshy fingers from the pure of the dawn. i bury it along with the hunt, i find it stained on my dress. i unclothe myself and dance in the mother mud. catch me laughing back at the cut of the creek. CATCH ME BURNING AND UNAFRAID. YOU CAN’T STOMACH ME. BOY, GO AHEAD AND TRY TO KILL THE THING THAT MADE YOU.”

So things go.

You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.

I need to be alone for certain periods of time or I violate my own rhythm.

You’re always haunted by the idea you’re wasting your life.

Don’t be afraid of death; be afraid of an unlived life. You don’t have to live forever, you just have to live.

Everything has changed and yet, I am more me than I’ve ever been.

The more you know yourself, the more patience you have for what you see in others.