Waking Up Alone

It's been awhile since I've had a dream like this. A dream so real that the world I wake to feels like the dream instead. A dream with smells and tastes and a touch that still vibrates my skin long after the dream fades away. This dream made me cry, reach out to empty air, trying to pull the peace I felt back into me. Failing.

I should say that I am not generally lonely. I do have moments in which I feel lonely, in which I long to be touched -- warm arms around me, a sweet caress on my face, the comforting weight of a strong hand on my back. But most of the time I am too busy living my life to be lonely. I have so many loving friends and family members around me all the time that it's hard to feel alone. I am making plans and carrying them out, communing with my pets, my inner child, my sense of self, and I don't feel lonely at all. But every once in a great while, an intangible sadness hits me hard, leaves me breathless almost, and I have to fight to remind myself that I am complete.

But it's always worse when I don't see it coming. When I go to weddings, when I spend too much time with loving couples, when my Azure Anniversary comes around (in June, and in January), I expect to feel the wave of loneliness sweep over me in mild, fleeting waves. I face it, and ride it out, and it passes, quickly and gently, leaving me to enjoy the sweet curves and corners of this path of sometime-solitude I have found myself walking. When I expect it, I can ride above it, like floating in a tide pool.

But unexpected loneliness hits like a tidal wave and can almost drag me under. I woke up this morning, almost drowned in the sadness that hit me like a hard wall of water, choking the breath of a sweet, peaceful morning from my lungs.

The dream:

I see him standing in line at a grocery store. I don't notice him at first, walk right past with my ten items or less, but he calls my name, twice, and I finally turn to look. He stands head and shoulders taller than the women in line in front of him, and is as handsome as the day I fell in love with him. The slight gap in his front teeth, the only thing between him and model-esque perfection, shows in his smile when I meet his eyes. It disappears again as I turn to walk away without a word.

"Wait! Don't go!" I hear that same tenor voice that once kept me up for hours on the phone. "Wait! I need to talk to you!" I turn back, ready to unleash the full fury of nine years of wondering how he could have hurt me the way he did, of the insecurity of wondering what was wrong with me, the frustration of being lonely without him while he was not lonely without me.

"I need to tell you I'm sorry. I never meant to hurt you. I know I did, and I'm so sorry...I love you." Nine years of fantasizing the moment when I finally get to see him beg for my forgiveness, of planning fancy speeches that eloquently demonstrate at once my deep hurt and benevolent forgiveness, and the only thing that comes out of my mouth is, "You broke my heart." He still has the upper hand, after all this time.

"I know I did, and I was so wrong. I was stupid. I could never get you out of my head after you left. I dream about you still. I dream about the way your cheeks flush when you're mad, or excited. About the way your small hands felt holding mine, the way you used to kiss each one of my fingers. I miss you so much."

"I don't know what to say. I can't say I don't miss you, but what am I supposed to do, just fall into your arms? You tore my heart out and I never put it back together. What am I supposed to do?" I sound more desperate than benevolent.

"I just want to hold you. Please?"

And there it is, that look, the one that melted my resolve every time. The one that turned the steel in my backbone to molten lava, made my knees quiver, my skin tingle. Nine years, and its power hasn't diminished even a tiny little bit. I stand frozen, unable to deny him, unsure if I want to, and he takes my silence as an invitation to move closer. So close now I can feel the heat of his body on mine, heat in familiar but long-dormant places in my own body, my own heart, my own mind. He touches my cheek, one gentle finger up the side like he used to do, and I melt into him.

He pulls me close, wraps his strong, so-strong arms around me, holding me as tight as the day our baby died inside me. I tuck my head into his shoulder; it fits perfectly, as if we were designed to fit together. Maybe we were, I think. We stand in endless time, locked together as if the past nine years could dissolve between us into nothing. Me feeling as if they had already begun to.

Suddenly, we are not in the store. We are on a bed, in a dark room, moonlight spilling across our bodies. There is no sex; maybe there was, or will be, I don’t know, but this moment is all about tender touch. I trace the lines of his back with my finger, kissing his shoulder when I get to the top. He lays back, and I run both hands down his chest, down his hips, over the tops of his thighs, all the way down to his feet. They are as groomed as they ever were; short, clean nails, even, straight toes, nothing out of order. My hands slide lightly back up his legs again, palms only, reveling in the coarseness of his hair. Up, up, up my hands slide, finally coming to rest on his chest, as I settle into his side, where I always rested so peacefully before.

A wave of anxiety hits me; I become terrified that I will wake up and find it has been just a cruel dream. But his hand captures mine and holds it to his heart, and I relax. It couldn’t be a dream; I can feel his heartbeat, and the tiny calluses on his thumbs.

We both lay still, breathing evenly, in sync, and I trace swirl patterns on his chest, examining the texture of his skin with my fingertips, my eyes, my heart. He doesn’t say anything, just wears that slight, crooked smile that always made my pulse race. We lay there for minutes, hours, centuries, just us, our peace, skin on skin, warmth and love. The peace stretches out past forever, all hurt forgotten. I sigh and relax into his side, drifting off to sleep…

I wake up shivering in my own bed. I pull the covers over me, but the cold is deeper than the goose-bumps on my legs. The tidal wave hits; I feel tears well up, a sharp pain in my chest. Something like desperation. “God,” I pray, “I need to be touched. I was not made to be alone.”

I lay quietly for several minutes, trying to pull my longing back into me, to crush it back down to a manageable size. I curse the recent romantic comedy I watched, the last wedding I went to, my own stupid, silly feminine heart. I slowly, slowly get a grip.

I know why I dream about him. He is the only person whose heart I have felt beating in time with mine, the only person whose entire length of skin has laid against mine. His shoulder is the only one I have rested my head on to fall asleep, his arms the only ones which have anchored me to my dreams. The pragmatic girl who worked it out and moved on, who knows how ridiculous the idea of us being anything more than a story in time, that knows that the me I am would not recognize, or even want, the him that he is now – that smart, together girl doesn’t dream. The me of dreams is the silly teenager who fell in love with the spontaneous, romantic boy who wasn’t ready to love anyone yet, even himself. She doesn’t know about letting go, moving on, about deserving better or being complete on her own. She longs for the comfort of his tender arms, how he used to hold her and tell her she was beautiful. She doesn’t know that when she dreams of him, I will be the one who wakes up alone

Water Toxic: Pastiche of Body Toxic

Here are the sounds: the smack of children's barefeet on the red dust, inebriated adult chattering in English or Diné, the sounds of twilight exuberance. There might be a radio blasting in the kitchen, and if so, it blares unattended.

Odors: four walls of stale Arizona desert. Around the back on the bottle-littered rectangle invisible to the dirt road that passes the shack an unsealed plastic drum of well water stagnates, peppered with dead and dying flies and gnats, beetles, waterbugs in the summer, thrashing and struggling for a clawhold on the slick plastic barrel sides. The yard's red crusted-over clay and dog deposits in the corners. Beer, stale frybread, diapers, too many people.

In 1979 (July) near Church Rock, New Mexico, on the Navajo Nation reservation, a hundred miles or so from my cousins' rez, a dam leading into the Rio Puerco River burst. 1,100 tons of uranium mining wastes -- radioactive sludge -- gushed through the mud-packed dam. 100 million gallons of radioactive water gushed through the dam before the crack was repaired. The expelled waste flooded into the tributary, propelled downstream all the way from New Mexico through Arizona and into Nevada. Contamination seeped into the reservation groundwater in three states. Five years later (1985), the United Nuclear Metals Co. hurriedly shut down its last mining operation on the reservation, as the business had become unprofitable; uranium particles and tainted tools were hastily buried at the site and left to bleed radiation into the earth. Despite calls for protection on the part of the Navajos who drink the water, to date no substantial effort has been put forth on the part of either the US government or UNMCo to clear up the contamination.

The Breakfast Club was released the year the mining company closed -- my mom and older relatives went to see it. The previews had featured Judd Nelson and Molly Ringwald, and, especially, Molly Ringwald's tube of lipstick tucked into her pert cleavage, a symbol of the idle restlessness that plagues high schools everywhere. Everyone identified with that movie on some level. My mom spent weeks afterward bemoaning her miserable high school career. John Hughes had made a moderately amusing, mildly touching drama about the social pecking-order and how in the end we're all just as wounded as the next kid; my mom missed the point completely, obsessing over visions of Molly Ringwald's shiny red hair, peachy complexion, and firm-breasted perfection.

I ask my relatives if they remember UNMCo closing or the dam bursting and they don't. I ask them if they remember The Breakfast Club and they do.

"That red-haired what's-her-name was such a bitch," says my mom, who hates redheads.

__________________Shadow_________________

I am a shadow.

I glide over bedroom walls,

replaying memories of the girl I once was.

I haunt every bathroom where rituals unfold,

withered women purging deep-fried expectations.

The emptiness clings, even when they gorge it.

They kneel and beat upon their ribs,

violently denounce the coiled serpent,

but it cannot be cast out.

They bow before me

in mass exodus.

A suggestion of who they could be

plays upon my lips, but

nothing

has ever been allowed

to pass these gates.

I don't speak.

I simply watch them bow,

and become, each one, a shadow,

like me.

Metropolis

Steel claws scrape the sky

and paned eyes stare from cinder-block faces

as homosapien drones dash through the day.

The frenzied tide s w e l l s within its concrete cage:

to buzz is to be.

Love Child

Lithe body slides over satin sheets

smooth as lies, eyes closed

legs wrapped tight around the secret.

Rhythm carries ecstasy

just beyond my reach;

teach me how to spin such tales.

I take it in, inch by slippery inch,

stretch to make room. Full, not sated,

hating who I shouldn't be.

Time scrubs away at ignorance:

planted seed growing, knowing

birth is imminent.

Silence sits swollen:

guilty contractions open my eyes,

reluctant to bear the burden of truth.

Prepare a cradle for knowledge,

delivered in agony to an anxious heart...

stillborn hope wrapped in thoughtless cotton.

Peace on Earth

Lines rehearsed, yet still unspoken.

Spirit crushed, but never broken,

you lay your life down as a token –

serve your country proud.

Eyes squeezed shut amidst the violence,

mouths that curve in sorrowed silence –

no one bothers with the why since

towers crumbled in a cloud.

Charred devotion masquerading,

empty praise while truth debating;

serve your idols, vain and hating –

we practice idle worship, too.

Send your armies in to maim us,

guilty, too, for what you blame us –

infidels, outright, and shameless,

but what must god perceive in you?

Look beyond mere bricks and mortar,

manmade lines, unnatural borders,

see creation without order,

not as God intended.

Neglected hearts have cracked and crumbled,

godless men their masses stumbled,

hearts have hardened, few are humble,

war and chaos they’ve befriended.

Loveless lives and reckless living,

pay a priest, confess, keep giving

(shallow faith is unforgiving),

light a candle, watch it burn.

Wicked hearts that feed on power,

bleed the land, collapse the tower.

You kill to make your brother cower;

will you ever learn?

While nations battle, hope is dying,

children murdered, mothers crying,

none on hope or faith relying

all the world around.

Victory cannot bring us peace,

war will not provide release:

death toll rising will not cease

until we lay our weapons down.

Dead On The Road

A thousand false starts
have left me stranded
on the same side
of the same road
for so long
that I can't remember
the turns that brought me here.
I had a map,
but I have always been arrogant,
so it is crumpled on a stretch of
highway behind me,
a long way from where I am now.

I have been spinning my wheels
in the hope that somebody will notice me
idling here and stop
to offer me assistance,
but at full-speed my spinning wheels
can't be seen and anyway
nobody knows to look for them.

People say that you should just keep trying,
keep turning the key until the engine catches,
because alone on a highway there is nothing else to do.
I am trying to believe that,
here on the side of this road
with nobody else around
but the pigeons that land on my hood.

I could call him.
It would be so easy –
but then I would have to confess
that I did not follow his directions,
and I am no good at confessions.
Even though he knows I am lost,
even though he wants me to call,
even though it would be so easy to do,
I am still too arrogant,
and I wonder how he could love me,
knowing this about me.


Where I lack in humility,
my earnestness abounds;
but hunger cannot make up
for all the rest,
wanting is not sufficient
when there is a road to travel
and pride has me stalled.

I sigh, glance toward the payphone,
and go back to turning the key…
it is still easier to be lost.

The F-Word

I love words. I love their texture -- the wide, round 'orange' with its tangy silent 'e', and the smooth, sexy 'moan' that ripples the breath it rides out on. I love the endless combinations words can come in -- and how words, with their own private lives, like the carefree 'butterfly' and the crisp and efficient 'stomach', can hold hands for a moment and give meaning to my world: "He gives me butterflies in my stomach." I love words...and I really love the word FAT.

It's to the point; it slides in on its frolicking fricative, makes a wide-open statement with its outstretched vowel, and turns tartly on tenacious toes and marches off after just one syllable. It says what it means and means what it says, takes no shortcuts and takes no prisoners. I love fat.

I'm fat. 300+ lbs worth of philosophies, opinions, metaphors, and memories. People in my world have learned to love fat like I do, and I aim to convert even more. I pull stereotypes from the air and fold them like origami into beautiful shapes, and I don't apologize for making the world a better place. I love words, I love fat, and I love me, and if you really know me, you will, too. That's not vanity, it's confidence, hard-earned and well-deserved.

I'm smart, funny, friendly, caring, creative, loving, generous, passionate, adventurous, dedicated, insightful, open-minded, and understanding. I'm also messy, chronically late, demanding, bad at managing money, bad at shutting up when I ought to, and far too often, I say the first thing that pops into my head. In other words, I'm not perfect. Kinda like everyone else in the world, right? The difference is, I know it, freely admit it, and embrace my imperfection -- and everyone else's -- as an exhilerating part of human existence.

I want to commune with people who get it, or people who don't but are willing to learn. People who can see through the thick layers of hatred and propaganda and glimpse the light of the truth shining through. People who can objectively and critically analyze what they read or hear and form their own opinions. People who refuse to be force-fed public opinion, who aren't afraid to be unpopular, who revel in standing out, who stand up for the underdog, who are brave enought to BE the underdog. People who remember when curves were a sign of beauty and vitality, when round cheeks were rosy and healthy, when women grew up to look like women and not little boys. People who don't put much stock in old wives' tales, urban legends, fairy tales, or the beauty myth.

My Country

My Country

This is my body.

These are my curves, my valleys and planes;

this is my country,

and I am a queen.

In my country,

I do not curtsy before the kings of other lands,

I do not bow to their demands,

I do not ask permission to love myself;

royalty is loved by decree,

and in my country, all visitors

must declare their loyalty to me.

In my country,

my word is law, and my law is gentle,

benevolent arms that reach the length of my domain

and gather all my subjects in a loving embrace –

lips, eyes, breasts, hips and thighs:

every part, in every size.

I will not will parts of my country away,

I will not despise, terrorize, or ostracize what lies inside

as some would-be conquerors have done.

I will not divide my territory,

will not pit my head against my heart,

I will cherish even the simplest parts, for,

in this land, harmony reigns,

and other queens envy the peace in my domain.

In my country,

I do not cower in fear of

adversarial monarchs in adjacent lands.

I do not fear demise at their angry hands.

My walls are fortified and fiercely guarded,

impervious, like that ancient city of fame,

but stronger:

there is no place in my courtyard

for wooden horses.

I will not open the gates,

I will not invite my enemies inside;

for all of history's great powers have fallen

by crumbling from within.

I will not surrender.

My city will never be burned to the ground,

because, though the battle rages on outside,

in my country, we are no longer at war.

Yes, there is a war, being fought outside,

a war waged quietly by unseen hands,

whose origin nobody understands,

but the fighting doesn't stop long enough to take stock.

There is a war, and mostly, the casualties are women.

Withered women, wasting away,

eyes fixed on the fun-house mirror,

on fat that does not exist,

dull eyes squeezing shut like a fist

and never opening again.

Imprisoned women, clawing their cages,

stretching, straining,

climbing up from not good enough.

But depraved brainwashing persists,

so they carve relief into their own wrists,

spilling life on the bathroom floor.

Dead and dying women –

mothers, daughters, sisters, lovers, and friends –

are scattered across the battlefield as far as I can see;

if I let that battle enter my country,

the next casualty will be me.

So in my country,

I demand peace.

I am purposely at ease,

consciously comfortable in my own skin.

I do not count calories as treason;

I do not weigh, measure, or grade my body.

I do not wish to trade my body.

I hold my body in high esteem,

because I am a queen

and I deserve no less.

This is my body.

These are my curves, my valleys and planes;

this is my country,

which peace and love maintain.

o 0 o * o 0 o Ardoris Lunaris o 0 o * o 0 o

Silver shimmer skips across satin spread;
stolen light from jealous luminaries
brushed across bronzed skin.

Turquoise sea reflected in small circles
set in shadows
above a smooth expanse
where velvet lips part slightly,
inviting exploration.

Warm honey pours over an eager tongue,
a taste of ecstasy entwined between us
where earth meets sky
and we float above.

Suggestion slides across the silken sheets --
absorbs doubt, fertilizes need,
connects our heat;
explosion of heavenly bodies
in fleshly form.

I'm Not That Girl

There I was, trapped
by two blue diamonds
and the flash of those so-straight teeth;
it's not my fault I forgot myself --
who could remember someone like me
in the face of someone like him?

I didn't remember that girl,
that plain, unremarkable girl,
who waits patiently to see me
in the bathroom mirror every morning,
who never forgets me,
who doesn't forget or fail to tell me
that girls like me
don't get guys like him.

So he smiled --
the well-mannered boy that his momma raised --
and the brutal force of it shoved that girl right out of my head.
How could I help what I did?

I smiled back.
It was weak,
like a housecat posturing
at a feline jungle warrior;
a crooked, dim-lit grin.
It was hungry,
and hopeful.
What could I do after that?

The hope leapt out too quick
to be disguised as anything but a milder cousin
of the same damn thing,
and he knew what I thought before I did.

So what was there for him to do
but fade the brilliance slowly out
and shift those gentle blues away --
politely, so politely --
and call that plain, plain girl back home
to roost in my head
where she belongs?

Disappointment

You look down me
like the road we drove to California
that time you were gonna make it big
but how you hadn't planned yet,
like the endless desert
you stretched your canvas dreams over
painting trees without roots.
I sat silent shotgun,
watching you reach
to hang your star upon nothing.

I don't know where it all went wrong;
I think it was near the bus stop.
We both watched the man climb off,
with his guitar and wine bottle,
"Follow your dreams" tattooed on one shoulder,
"U-turn" on the other.

I said, "Let's go home,
start a family,
tuck our kids in every night
look back fondly on this dream,
and grow old together."
You said, "Keep driving till I tell you to stop."

I think that was when you became the traveler

and I became the road.

Wetback

"Mommy, who is that man on the corner
there, with the sign?"
"That's just a Mexican, honey.
Don't look --
I mean, don't stare."

Brown and compact,
black slicked back
hair thick and dirty,
with a sign:
"Trabajador."

Tan and only half a man
if you ask most of us,
but he wouldn't understand anyway.
He only knows six words in English;
"wetback" is one of them, but "subhuman"
is out of his reach so far.

He crossed three borders
and one river at night,
slipped past banditos and dirty cops,
rode on top of a train
with cans of sardines in each pocket and
some pesos sewn into his waistband.

He got caught once,
by white men at the border;
not cops but
citizens protecting their country.
They pushed his head into manure
and told him to eat it,
because that was the only
American meal he'd ever taste.
He didn't understand;
knew "shit" but not "meal" and only
that he would be back in Honduras soon.

That was last time,
after the Mexicans robbed him
and used words he did understand,
like "mierda" and "mojado"
to send him back to Tegucigalpa,
because American politics turned up the heat
on Mexico's immigration policy
and they are not his brothers anymore.
He escaped the Mexicans and made it to Arizona,
where the white men caught him,
called him a Mexican --
the white man's word for brown men --
and fed him feces.

This time, though, he made it over the river
naked, clothes in a garbage bag on a rope,
floating behind him in the river that stood between him,
those white men,
and the only way to feed his children
back in his country of no jobs and
no food and
whole families that eat less than nothing for years
to pay for journeys like this.

This time, he slipped past the banditos
and the vigilantes,
and he finally feels like a man
even though he knows we don't see a man,

just a wetback.