this convoluted elementary school history lesson riddled with inaccuracies brought to you by Bravo

the alarm took me by surprise at two o'clock this morning,
interrupting the utter silence with the way it howled through the town,
slow and sad and warning.
I wondered what it sounded like 100 years ago
when British soldiers burned my sleepy little village to the ground,
and I could see men crawling in through the windows
and pulling us out by our hair, me and my sleeping mother, to set our lives on fire.
though I'm sure that isn't how it happened,
it felt real
until the alarm stopped
and I started thinking again about the episode of the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills I had just watched
and what a bitch that Lisa Vanderpump is.

in which everything is perfect except for one thing

the way you purposely do things just to make me laugh
and extol the virtues of my features
every time I get sad
and you take me to the zoo on my birthday
(because I fucking hate my birthday, but I fucking love the zoo)
and you take me out so I can finally wear that ruffly nude dress that was too short for my cousin's wedding
and you put on a tie
(even though you'd prefer to just keep your tee shirt on)
and when I collapse into bed,
you take me by the hand and turn on Billie Holiday singing "The Very Thought of You"
and dance around the room
and we stay up all night
until 4:00am when we stumble out to my car
and drive and drive and drive
and finally stop
and I have to pull away without you.

what it takes (i guess)

not the death of two (younger) siblings;
the first a 23 year old sister struck by a car on her nightly run,
the second a brother in his 50s,
who came home from work
to take a nap on the couch
and lose his battle with lung cancer,
leaving his wife with three growing sons and no means to pay the bills,
or the death of both parents:
the sudden diagnosis and the rapid way it took her mother,
the lengthy decline of her father who held on to the bitter end,
keeping his grandchildren awake in fits of giggles with his loud, middle-of-the-night singing
and other equally amusing side effects of senility.
nor 30-odd years of struggling to pay the bills,
while feeding and clothing and raising six (SIX!) daughters
on the income of an exhausted, overworked husband.

no, no
it was my sister,
23 and fickle,
breaking up with her Catholic boyfriend of four years without a care in the world
to drive across the country with a 20 year old redhead
some punk kid she met in a bar
that at last drove my stoic martyr -- i mean mother -- to tears
that she was not too ashamed to silently bury into her pillow
and then deny afterwards.

we met at a wedding

and spent the night in drunken conversation.
we were both nursing broken hearts,
finishing summers spent wallowing in the senselessness of loving the disloyal.
you laughed at my clumsy youth through the haze of vodka tonics
while i wondered if you'd kiss me.

months and months and months of
s l o w l y
getting to know each other,
trading secrets and ideas
while i pretended not to notice
you pretending not to notice
that i had purposely unbuttoned my shirt.

fastforwardto:

four in the morning
when you whisper my name so quietly that i wonder if you're hoping i'm asleep,
and my response comes out so urgently it sounds as if i was afraid it would get stuck in my throat.
you inhale
and everything but my heart stops,
fixes in place for years
until you speak.

"i love you."


the world picks up again, only now
there is no one in it but you.

Grazed Knees

They warn you not to go to bed angry,

but I've found it usually works:

time and sleep and silence cure my ailments.

But this morning I opened my eyes

with my fists still clenched and my heart still compressed

and ugly inside things

clawing at my rib cage

and climbing my throat,

trying to push themselves out of my mouth and,

finding my jaw unwilling to loosen,

they settle for second best and burn my tongue.

I sit boiling, rigid, and hell-bent on containment,

and finally see why you tell me

anger is a wasted emotion.

Lost in my Mind

It started with the way you -

where did it start? -

perhaps it was the smile,

no, I think it was the accent that shows up for certain, specific vowel sounds,

and then I think it was that look you get sometimes-

that momentary dissolution into reaction

that I find so charming that I often feel unable to resist the urge

to say bizarre little things

just to watch you delight over them, for an instant or so.

My head is running away from me

and taking all my good sense with it.

A Nervous Tic Motion of the Head to the Left

Nothing nothing nothing

sounds the way I want it to

or says the things I want to say

without telling the whole internet

all my dirty secrets.