Screw the Other Hand

I am sorry for the profanity right upfront

Just as I am sorry for having for a brain Tori’s famous

comic book tattoo

No, I am not sorry

sitting up in bed at all hours watching the night go by the last of the handful of nights I spend in this house yes

And Tori’s famous tear is in my hand now, walking my usual walk, picturing life without these trees and puddles picturing this path without me in it

Madwoman

I need not sleep but to witness every last detail of the old folks’ home the elementary school the beach where I died when someone proposed to me

That was a long time ago

I never married

I put on music in my brain and do not cry

I fondle books by my bedside and do not cry

I put on pajamas and do not cry

I wander out to the terrace and do not cry

I touch the rough skin of the outside wall and do not cry

I see the crushed spiders hanging on the door frame

Died when they were trying to crawl inside to warmth

And do not cry.

I concur with previous speaker that this is cooling faster than I can 

V is for visitor

Life goes on in a place without us

I eat some licorice

I put on some sweats and think about putting my fist through that door

I do not want to talk about it think about it or acknowledge it in any way before it burns right in front of my very eyes

Maybe not even then.

I always was a fisherman’s woman on the sunny road a fisherman’s friend looking at the boats tied to the pier an understudy in weeding a hand at picking apples a daffodil in the school play with crêpe paper around my head as petals a daughter who wore rubber boots and slept her nights under a full blanket of stars

in the map room practicing how to walk with the fishing rod like a boy for a skit in the gym singing Christmas hymns with the entire school on First Advent Sunday feeling the soaring sound of children’s singing alter the shape of the large space like magic not knowing what the song was really about but recognizing its beauty and the catharsis of the moment, even as a little kid, as long as the song ran

a lover of the flannel shirt a woman married to her boots that were made for walking past the church yard to the observation tower to kiss her man on top while the wind was howling in the nooks and corners and Springsteen sang about the darkness on the edge of town

of course, the edge of town was an understatement

I was the girl who watched Footloose twenty times that fall, desperate for a guy like Ren to come and sweep her off her feet, desperate to be that girl that girl at the trainyard

dance your ass off!

that rebel girl wearing the red boots showing him the poem she wrote on the wall of the abandoned train car standing in the field counting down (a distant reminder of their love presented much later in the very famous tale of unusual teenage fantasy)

oh the virginal desires of young girls good girls who did not rebel until late teens then oh boy how we rebelled against our parents the system the norm the double standard the middle class the bourgeoisie we wore Doc Martens pierced our lips cropped our hair bought a leather jacket like the one the guy in The Crow wore listened to Bowie took on the whole world Rebel Rebel.

Eating half my lipstick at the school disco

Hanging in the monkey bars barely hanging because it was hard

Gossiping in the gooseberry bush and the friend with the fiery hair

Skiing so reluctantly snail pace and confessing secrets while walking really just wearing the skis as snowshoes

dancing eating paper in the birch grove where the hay helloed quietly

dark woods get out of my garden

the forester and the fairies are not coming to rescue us cavalry

monkey bars boulders where so much girltalk was talked sitting on the boulders they were like mountains

plant life respect the nature the rotting leaves and the sandpit where you were not to go alone quicksand

maybe it was only yesterday in the toilets playing cards dancing girls

I put on the fig-scented body lotion I thought was so luxurious and counted the geese on the field a hundred thousand a million specks quacking

ancient mailboxes earth cellars and the hill where we slid down on sleds yelling may the flax grow long

we used to play Capture the Flag at the sandpit in the fall with the whole school attending teachers and all until it was forbidden because they decided it glorified warfare.

Virginia went mad sometimes she was troubled by the fire of her life the desire she was never quite able to reciprocate the many hardships of being a woman who thought so hard of things.

But she came back from madness to the love and companionship of someone who adored her

and she loved him unwaveringly until the end

“the insane view of life has much to be said for it” she said

A place does not love you back this is why it is so tragic to give it all up she won’t tell you she will miss you too

She tells me home is where the people are which I guess is true

with the fantastic memory left of life as a house

Leonard loved her like a house, insanities and tobacco smell, for what she was he always loved her

I needed my house before I needed anyone

and when that house is gone

the heartland of my soul is lost this is what I thought secretly since soul is a romance a word reserved for novices and rank arrogant amateurs

but it will not be lost he said I promise you I will carry you.

I needed my house before I needed anyone

Is this the moment that changes forever?

Do I see a face amid my life's endeavor?

Is his house the one where I truly belong?

Thank you to the following ladies of the sung and written word: Tori Amos, Laura Veirs, Emiliana Torrini, Nancy Sinatra, Jenny Wilson, Stephenie Meyer, and Virginia Woolf

And a heartfelt thanks to the gentlemen: Bruce Springsteen, David Bowie, Herbert Ross, Brandon Lee, and Mark Andrus

With a special bow for the Buffy references to Jane Espenson and Douglas Petrie, and to the maestro, Joss Whedon

The Virginia Woolf quote from Nigel Nicolson's biography Virginia Woolf, from 2000, p. 15