False Advertising

…even after a crash, a key still fits the ignition. There just isn’t anything left to drive.

Why do you write?

I’ll give it all up to live at your feet. I’ll kiss my mother goodbye and walk across the coals. Maybe it’s bigger than love, what we have. Maybe it’s louder. Let me be the quiet. Let me be the veins. Rip me apart. Put me back together. We are dancing in the dark and no one knows our names. No one can look our way. There is something twisting itself through my bones and it is saying stop. It is saying you don’t know how he’ll ruin you. And I am saying let him. Look how beautiful it is when he does. Look.

I take myself out to dinner and do not look at my phone once. I do not call a friend up and ask them to join me. I listen attentively to the conversation in my head. I walk with myself to the library. Read novels, magazines, dusty collections of poetry. Browse zines online and buy a stack of ones that catch my interest. I close my eyes in bed and put my hands in-between my thighs. Know when to go faster, when to slow down, when to speed it up. I moan without shame. I make myself coffee, sip it languorously on my balcony, let my bare shoulders be warmed by the sun and ignore my neighbor’s sideways looks. I put on lipstick on the days I am not leaving the house. Walk around confidently, wearing only underwear and carelessness. Shake my limbs to the busting beat of a song and do not worry about my arms going one way and my legs another. I bite down hard on “monogamy.” Swish it around in my mouth, run my tongue over its bumps and curves, and then spit it out. I bleed on scraps of paper. Let my thoughts out. Listen to them more intently than any person could. I see all parts of me and do not blush. I do not look away. I do not try to run. I stare deeper. Force myself to keep eye contact. Accept all that is inside of me. Make my apologies. I bend my hands in forgiveness. I rise, dripping in the blood of past and future guilt and say, it is okay. All of you. All of me. It is okay.