Love’s a terrible thing
when you’ve been reduced to a scheduling item –
the emotional equivalent of a lamppost,
lovely and terribly convenient to have around,
but not exactly a high emotional investment.
Sometimes you don’t even notice
when the bulb’s gone out.
And then the stretch of putting it off and putting it off,
always meaning to attend to the deadness in your room,
but so much a second thought
that such a nonessential scheduling item
stays dead,
for months,
until finally you know you’ll never put a bulb back
and say fuck it,
then throw it in the trash
so you can get a different, shinier lamppost.
I did not like being that scheduling item.
My bulb left broken for much too long,
even though you kept saying that one day,
things would be brighter.
Poem: The Anger of a Lamppost
8 JulYou are no string of Christmas lights.
16 DecI’ve battled depression. I’ve battled eating disorders. I’ve battled abuse and bullying and cruelty from people who said they loved me. And for years, I thought that if only I could figure out what had gone wrong with me, what flaw it was that had broken through my skin and left such a gaping hole, then I could remove it, fix it, and everything wouldn’t hurt so more.
I never could do it.
But that was because there was no master flaw in me.
And then today, I was hanging Christmas lights.
You are no string of Christmas lights
You are no string of Christmas lights, honey,
with your wires all tangled and one loose light
that if you could only find and twist back into place,
you wouldn’t be so broken anymore.
There is no one loose gauge to you,
no link bumped out of place,
there is no one thing wrong for you to fix
and suddenly be restored to your former glory.
That’s not the way that people shine.
You’re so much more than the current running through your veins,
you are not just the lights you show.
And how you feel is not a glitch,
because there’s nothing wrong at all.
How you feel is how you think
and how you act
and how you blink
when somebody tries to poke you in the eye –
if you jerk back, if you don’t move, or
if you just all out slap them in the face.
There’s more decision than reflex there.
You are not missing one part that should shine.
You are not mere plastic decoration.
You have not failed, because perfection was never a requirement.
You are no mere string of Christmas lights, honey.
Quill Aquiver 