Morning After

Why write a feeling, if only to make it go away?

Why foster contentment in the rising paradox? Why not allow the need, the sorrow, the suffering to pour onto the page without apology?

Unjustified, unexplained.

Because a happy clause suppresses longing. The easily written lullaby subdues desperation and quiets unanswerable questions. 

I sit at the purple table. There are rhythmic boots and a radio voice.  Homes blue and yellow, unshucked and buttoned pretty. The old woman bent over with (what I thought were) years. Instead, it’s the leaf blower, pulling her lithe body into an aged shape.  She is not yet strong enough to be weak.

Nor am I. But I want to be. 

Open. To be possessed, to be inhabited.

Before, I wanted to spill into the world. I needed to justify my existence, share myself naked, unasked for. Now there is an inverse desire, a reckless invitation.

Penetrate me, fill me, understand me without my doing. I want to surrender to you.  

But I am not lover enough to trust your unknown. You, with your imperfections and desires, unseen agendas and optimism…all the things I play upon for the seduction. If you are charmed, you are untrustworthy. I need the unattainable man. One who will not be sirened.  

I need to be taken.  

Who is brave enough for that? Or even wants it these days?

So I become the hero, making love to myself on rainy nights.  Dressing in lace, dancing, hand sliding down my stomach to the sound of Hendrix guitar. Sweat on my thighs and the back of my neck. Breathing for the ficus and the philodendron. The longing slaughters my orgasm and makes it safe, makes it possible. 

Morning after, I return to the words, my journal, fat delusion of Nature’s pandering. There is no compass, no morality, no truth. So I write it. And when it sounds good, I feel better. Then worse, of course. Because truth is always denied in words and knowing evicts all that is known.