"   Let yourself become living poetry.   "

"  

I.
When I was trying to quit smoking
and we drank white wine from Mason jars,
you called my freckles cocoa powder
and I called your green eyes
celery.

II.
I am learning how to be a grown-up
who pays bills, cooks her own meals,
and doesn’t cry at words like
I think I just want to be friends.

III.
The truth is this:
Love is an organic thing.
It rots and softens.

  "

"   I can write the saddest poem of all tonight. I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.   "

"  

Woke up today a woman
my lengthy curls fell in clumps
around my neck which,
I have always felt,
was too big to be a woman’s neck.

I never understood
the difference between the unripe
bulb of my throat and the apple of
my counterpart’s,
still I woke a woman.

In romance with myself,
I wrap soft thighs around pillows
and tangle
in dreams of sex with broad shouldered men
and traveling the world alone.

Woke up this morning a woman,
terrified I might be pregnant but
knowing damn well I am not.
Broad shouldered men
won’t love me forever.

Traveling alone, they say
is dangerous for women like me.
If I cannot do by myself
and he cannot do by me,
what is left to do?

I watch too much television
so I know the realities of abduction
and the risk of independence.
The difficulty of being
woman
is not weighing my different fates.

The difficulty of being
woman
is thinking I have to choose.

  "

"   We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.   "