The Little Dumpling Lifter

…throw roses into the abyss and say: ‘here is my thanks to the monster who didn’t succeed in swallowing me alive.

You are personally responsible for becoming more ethical than the society you grew up in.

There’s an old Jewish story that says in the beginning God was everywhere and everything, a totality. But to make creation, God had to remove Himself from some part of the universe, so something besides Himself could exist. So He breathed in, and in the places where God withdrew, there creation exists. “So God just leaves?” No. He watches. He rejoices. He weeps. He observes the moral drama of human life and gives meaning to it by caring passionately about us, and remembering.“ Matthew ten, verse twenty-nine: Not one sparrow can fall to the ground without your Father knowing it.” But the sparrow still falls.

I may think of you softly from time to time. But I’ll cut off my hand before I ever reach for you again.

I hated him most for not having the courage to ruin us grandly. To break all the dishes and burn down the house. Instead he sunk quiet into the arms of a beautiful, weak little bird. Denied me my spilled blood, my great war, everything except his confession.

I read that sometimes when someone receives a heart transplant, the heart, on a cellular level, still has memories of its first home.  People suddenly remember directions to places they have never been. They can suddenly play the piano. One man dreamed of his donor’s death. His body, now fluent in a new language. And I wonder what my own body will remember even after it has been asked to forget. If when I die, if when my body is sectioned up, half given to the dirt and half given a new purpose, I wonder, if some stranger with my memories will suddenly begin to jolt awake in the middle of the night. Sitting up, her arm outstretched, somehow knowing She is still reaching for your face.

I kiss him and say: There is something in me cannot be healed. There is something in me needs breaking open.

In this, the moment allowed to my loneliness, Oregon becomes a pregnant hollow, a swelling brood of                     absence. What more do you want from my empty heart, love? All the longing I do is for a dead man. I open my mouth and his hands fall out.

This is the house that built me and I’m gonna burn it down. This is the river I crawled from and I refuse to drown here. And bless the strippers but fuck the men. And bless the berries but fuck the farm. And bless the daughter but fuck the family. What is a home if not the first place you learn to run from? You’ve got to bite the hand that starves you, and in doing so Praise the place that birthed you. Birthed you fucked up. Birthed you ugly, and interesting, and ready to scream.

You loved a man who treated you like absinthe, half poison and half god.

I decided, enough pain….I was not the woman who breaks into pieces under the blows of abandonment and absence, who goes mad, who dies. Only a few fragments had splintered off, for the rest I was well. I was whole, whole I would remain. To those who hurt me, I react giving back in kind. I am the queen of spades, I am the wasp that stings, I am the dark serpent. I am the invulnerable animal who passes through fire and is not burned.

You fell for him because his heart is no heavier than air, because he is so free of ghosts and jagged edges. And you wanted him to love you back because you wanted proof you could be air too. But you’re not, are you little one? You are a church of broken glass and hallelujahs. You are haunted like every other holy thing. What tried to destroy you didn’t have the strength. Still you stand. Sturdy and smelling of smoke.

Something will grow from what you are going through. And it will be you.

As powerful as our legs are, as magnificent as our lungs and arms and muscles are, nothing matters more than the mind.

If traveling was free you would never see me again.