When you touch me
Whales moan along the length of my neck
Violins strain in the insides of my arms (more…)

If the web is spun tight enough, maybe Charlotte will live
and Wilbur will win, and baby spiders will never eat their mothers
If I cross my fingers and my toes and breathe real slow
I will not be beaten tonight for not cleaning my room
If Bilbo never finds the ring and Gandalf never finds Bilbo
then the great worm will leave the sea towns alone
If I walk on the curb perfectly straight, not tipping or falling,
I will not be touched tonight
If Romeo had never seen Juliet, maybe they both would’ve lived
and had full lives, bereft of romance and tragedy
If I sing a special song and not forget a word or tune
I will be left alone to read and sleep and hurry
through the night, so I can leave without harm in the morning for school
If Laura marries Manny, they will have many children
and many Happy, Golden Years
If I wake slowly, maybe mother will be gone and brother will be gone
and I will not be hit or rushed or yelled at
If I run fast enough, maybe I will never have to see them again
maybe I will find of libraries full of books to be read
maybe I will find god and understand why
maybe I will finally know what I did wrong
maybe, maybe, maybe
If I only knew for sure

10/11/1995

You don’t hear a thing I say
Mother rants again
Then the slap
Looking at her, I think
I don’t even know who you are (more…)

Can the heart manage
Disaffection
Roll down my dunes
The sand sifts in the middle
A depression a footprint
The minor stars disappear
Forgetting they were there
Sand in your palm
Sifts from your fingers
Catch hold, please catch on
tears can’t hold this shape
Mud cakes the sky
Nothing cemented or dry
Nothing solid here
Disregard like tap water
Tasteless and clear and stale
Washes the recent crumbling
In the pit of my stomach
If I should start to cry
Would it stop when I am empty enough?

December 5, 1998

Ache wrecks the moment while resting and waiting
On one arm I lean and watch you sleeping
And think how fragile you are, how soft and yielding
How you give and surrender and back down when I yell and rant
I think how easy it is to hurt you, to poke my angry nastiness
like a dirty finger, into the fine loveliness that is your soul
Just to see it deflate and crumble and you cry out in pain
While I pull out my hand from the bloody mess that is your heart
and almost laugh at how rotten and mean and nearly evil I am
I could be like a cat then, toying and swatting at the wound
and pulling back just a little, and wait till you struggle to get up
When you are almost there, I could, in some insanely viscous way
Kick out your props and laugh and giggle and try not to show it
While you cry
And then I see, the middle of a laugh
Your soft, sad, teary eyes
Your hurt and confusion
Your dismay
And I see why it will never be funny enough
to make you cry

12/1/1995

A girl and a boy
Standing by a door
Behind there is screaming
Adults
Divorce

A man and a woman
Sitting outside a door
Behind there is screaming
Baby
Wailing

A man and a girl
Walking behind a coffin
Inside there is screaming
Wife
Mother
Buried

November 16, 1998

Ophelia lived waiting for something
Something walked into her kitchen
Looking like a man called Henry (more…)

Dreaming of her one night
‘Lissa, she says between gaps of chewing
do you remember
humbergers with cheese and cats with fleas?
cold nights make me wet the bed
Can I sleep with you again?
Glasses break too easy
Shingles and nursery school?
The time we had lice and stayed home and you cried?
The time we ran away?
A dollar, a pillow and a bag of chips?
Why were we always in trouble?
Laughing at the table
The M-O-M’s screams made us laugh harder
You always wanted to hug
I pushed away
(sometimes hugged back harder)
Your growing breasts bugged me
I could stare at them for hours, but you wouldn’t let me
You said I could stare at my own when I got some
When am I gonna get some?
How many times did we give each other haircuts?
We stopped playing tea time and good neighbors
After that first fist fight fought in front of the M-O-M
We only stopped when we knew you would win
I started to branch out
Crimes on my own, you no more mastermind
But I miss sugar water and wafers
And the sound of our laughter on Saturday mornings
I wake up crying.

October 8, 1998

My first crime as a girl
For my brother
My moon
There was no sun in my childhood
There was him
Ghostly stares with meager light
To read by
To tell time
My lunar god
Worshipping
I pretended to be smaller
I pretended to be slower
He was granite and ice
Eyes like slits, a back of stone
An eclipse made dark days dim
My mother’s comments
She would eye us both
Slicing the moon from view
Unspoken contest
I hid further from the cold extinguishing light
Degraded phases, embarrassed moon
We hated, we swore
We had nothing more
Midnight Icarus, I flew
And tried to land on the face of the moon

11/10/98

Mother Goosey, Mother Goose
where did I learn to become so loose?
in the corner, with Little Jack?
who stuck me in a pumpkin
who put it on my head so I couldn’t see
the candlestick, the finger being pricked
the blood on my undies, my nighties
my hands, my face, my body?
Oh, mother, Mother, MOTHER….

the crayons and coloring books
let me go to a place where no one sees
where I fly with cow and run with the spoon
and sail the seas with the pussycat and the owl
and Wyken, who is blinking and nodding off
let me lay and sleep and hide from the bad dreams
the wake me screaming and crying and bleating
like Mary’s little lamb, lost, lost,
my childhood is lost.

9/8/1995