threat
I know how to act when a man doesn’t want me,
I know how to pretend when a man wants me and I don’t want him.
I don’t know what to do when it threatens to be mutual.
I know how to become the typical desperate girl when I’m not wanted,
Graciously making a fool of myself. And then I wonder why I
Even liked him in the first place.
I know how to please and rage the hearts and bodies of lonely men
That I feel terrible for not genuinely wanting even though I spend
Weeks convincing myself I do.
My legs like a quaker, naked in bed. Obeying, forgetting I am a rebel at heart.
Forgetting I was controlled and forced to behave my whole life.
Slithering back into that role like a snake reaching for the sun.
And most intensely forgetting that my behavior will end up breaking hearts
No matter how much I try to persuade myself there is something between us,
Or that I owe my body to another man.
But strangely and as typical as my everyday shoes, when there’s a chance
There is mutual feeling between me and a man, I am terrified.
This isn’t supposed to happen. Aren’t I the ugly one?
Aren’t I the sick broken soul? The abused child? The idiot, incapable one?
The hanging marionette of my mother confirms these things in
My brain second by second, for years she has been there, behind my play
Theater eyes, dancing and rattling hauntingly, forcing my dreams to become nightmares.
I’m ready to kill her off like a spider on my bedroom wall, to tear her strings, to burn
Her wooden form and all the lies she resentfully funneled into me, until my eyes rolled
Back in my head, until all I could see was the end of the world.
