not just on

prose (original)

i hardly ever dress up. i was raised in corduroy and cotton. took me twenty years to tear up my clothes. love of a thrift store and all you can find. life underground because main street got old. i could not appreciate anything. until I found you.

poem (remixed from prose)

i hardly ever dress up

i was raised in corduroy and cotton

took me twenty years to

tear up my clothes

love of a thrift store and all

you can find life underground because

main street got old

i could not appreciate anything

until I found you

cocoa and me

cocoa did her nails. then she did mine. she told me how happy i made her dad. she was a working girl and a high class escort. kept in a fancy hotel. SF. Civic Center. i was friends with her dad. Market Street felt alive and dead simultaneously. how could it be? i wondered what life was like. i lost my job and family and forgot how to pray. life was beginning to make sense.

what on earth

a life could not be loved. many years unaccounted for. scratch the whole system. a rainbow upside down. send your colors into outer space. there's no home for you here.

let us walk

religion was boy or girl and binary. this way or that. nothing in between. i was tomboy. i had a spirit. they wanted to catch it in butterfly nets. jar and jam. you were hard and wonderful. not like other girls. let's go get lost together. and we did.

thoughts

have their own life. you cannot tame nor deny them. you can notice them. become aware. go do what you do. let them be. these are only thoughts. they need not hurt you or change or possess you.

11 going on 12

1985. the year of the almost divorce. my brother drove a Saab. you could hear each gear through the hills outside Boston like a soft and warm siren. i was having my first breakdown. witnessing the family fall apart. feeling it hot. crying all the time. my brother looked out for me.

31 (years)

2004. individuation. you beat the habit. the world brand new and you, what will you do? move to San Francisco. the Panhandle and Page Street. top floor of a tired Victorian. walking down to the Lower Haight district and the International Café. getting close to Jung and these books on psychology. wishing you had a six figure deal on your novel. Girl Without Borders. the rains came hard that winter. you didn't want to yet you felt all alone again like nothing gives.