miss bee & her words

Leave your cold out for the soft sincerity that meets you at the front door, leave your troubles out for the kind and full flame that burns for your heart. The soft fold of mutual love, found to the full on warm doorsteps, in messy houses, and messy lives, exchanging kindness for kindness and suddenly - we are exactly where we should be. (Written for a temporary Christmas mural for a space called Common Room. 11.28.17)

Here i am in the ruin of a thing i cannot say too many adjectives and too many truths language is such a sharp thing always ready to cut away the things it thinks you do not need the love it thinks you don't deserve you with your single syllables wielding words like go and i'm still kind you cannot unlearn the kindness your parents fed you will never forget to say i'm sorry even if you're not at fault and as he walks out you hold the door open just like your mother said to do let him take first pick of the food laid out let him take first pick of your love laid out you apologize to your friends for the way he acts say "i'm sorry, he wasn't raised like we were" but get angry when some cuts a line or spits on the street they weren't raised like you either but your heart has learned to ignore the way his manners change you into someone your parents didn't raise  “Manner Matter”  Ina Battung

and there is still too little love between me and this body I'm working it too hard but not hard enough that it changes and makes people come back i want my body to say things my mouth cannot things like, this is where you left me on the precipice of change on the edge of the high dive i want you to see the way my muscles have slopes that your fingers never got to touch who would have known that there were parts of me you couldn't have that at night as i push myself over the edge of that high dive i learned that there was more than one way to shed water not from my eyes but from my forehead and the back of my neck all this damp saltiness soaking the band of my bra and i let you out like an exit door in a crowded cinema so eager to leave that you forget me in the seat watching the credits keep rolling there are things you learn in the quite roll of words and names things you will never know cause i'm a body you can never have again  “Exercise”  Ina Battung 

I remember the running before other things eight years old asking boys to race with me from the gate to the bus as the dust bites our heels like hungry dogs in alleyways I remember losing and good natured shoves and "next time" I remember these things as those same boys come to parties sit at dinner and say your name like a treat they haven't tasted for years not since they were a child and I recall the running and the losing and I wonder if we tried would you still be as kind as to say "next time" because the path is longer than the gate to the bus now its your home to my home and we've never been so far apart so many corners to turn and things to pick up and people to meet and signs to stop by too many boys to say no so many boys who say yes and maybe "next time" is not a kindness but a resignation because the the gate to the bus was easier than this.  Ina Battung "Race You"

I want to show you. I want to hold it like it is poison you'll have to swallow. I think good girls can be the most vindictive because when they say "this is the worst" it is the truth because it is the only thing all the time. "Swallow what you said," she said, "here I have them all."

I love you like a body takes a bullet, resignation, even the shooter cannot take this back. The path to me was so clear, no obstacles to deter your trajectory. And me, my body, so willing, breaking skin coming, coming in. And now I am blood and you are a bullet. The talk amongst themselves, all facts, like we are a murder mystery game. And they speculate, 38 caliber they whisper, whisper, whisper. My death is a whisper, my end is a whisper and I wonder if it follows you home. Ina Battung "Murder Game"

love is hard in this place next to people who are self proclaimed experts at how to pick the time and place and who should pay but i want more than the one who knows how much to give on the first second and fifteenth date  give me a little inexperienced love  any day hold my hand because the moment said so not because your brother told you it was time line your knees up with mine don't apologize i like it when our shoulders brush but be a little careful because your carelessness can have me admitting love and before you know it you are responsible  for the way I can't let go not even when the moment says  "it's time" not even when our best friends say "go" and your mother tells mine "it's been over for a while" while my dad looks on thinking she's so sad.

One day you'll find out that all these songs are about you every spoken word analogy was a clear translation of where we stood just then at some point that'll be pinned you will understand how secretly intentional all those tight room shoulder brushes are in a clarified and clear moment I will let you see how empty of a home I've been just me. 

Losing you  is even more  familiar  than having you around.