Sneakrets

[sneakrets]

Hunger/Anger

Tonight I ate everything I could see

Trying to grow myself faster

Than my own anger could eat me

But of course, any woman can tell you

The way this always ends

With a tender, full belly

and an empty, ringing heart

[sneakrets]

Technically

If you were to use a ruler

You would find about 5 and a half inches between us

But just now when I closed my eyes

I felt the gap stretch out for miles

And you disappeared sideways like a distant shoreline

[sneakrets]

Another Woman’s Problems

[sneakrets]

Match

[sneakrets]

Take it with you

[sneakrets]

Listen,

It’s not that I’m quite depressed

But more that I can’t quite understand being happy

I don’t know how to file away fear in a drawer, to tuck it behind my ear, or place it anywhere besides in a screaming large red font before my eyes

And I don’t quite know how to be honest without rushing

(Surely no one can stand to listen to my health scares and worries for more than 90 seconds at a time)

I wonder why people don’t ask me questions, but give answers that sound like feet fleeing across pavement

And laughter does not quite float up my chest as it once did- it seems weighted down and dragged up by hysteria more often than not (that is to say- laughing seems to follow from crying these days)

And listen,

It’s not that I quite want to die, it’s just that I’m not sure if it’s worse to die or to throw up or to have a panic attack at the grocery store or worst of all, become undesirable- in work or in love.

And it’s not that I’ve quite given up hope- a Good Life is imaginable, but with my current fingers, ungraspable

[sneakrets]

I am a source of water

Part 1:

For my birthday I would like

A pool filled with all the tears that I have ever cried through my entire life.

My only fear is that

it won’t be enough to drown me.

.

.

Part 2:

I once heard a myth that said

(Okay, I just invented it)

That each person dies when they have cried enough tears for them to drown in.

And to those holding back- who let sadness knock fruitlessly on the door of their heart- don’t think you will escape.

Because every tear that has asked to be shed will count toward your final tally.

It seems a kind of mercy to allow those who have cried a river

To float away on its current.

[sneakrets]

Sweet, sick, selfish

If I can’t enjoy my body, then no one can, I think sometimes, feeling sick and spiteful.

I would rather hoard every bit of sweetness I grow- let it weigh me down, drooping and rotting- than to let you have even a single taste.

[sneakrets]

Of course I am an actor

But a sadly limited talent-

as the only role I know how to play is me not panicking.

I walk though the aisles of the grocery store, run into an acquaintance at the corner, nod along to my doctor’s advice,

all while acting- “...charming, captivating, she truly becomes her character!”

Yes, I play a person who does not panic-

whose heart is not pounding in every orifice, whose body temperature shifts do not seem to be wholly separate from the surrounding air.

Someone whose breath comes evenly, who sits close to the exit just by chance, and who has not asked herself five times in the past minute if she is surely about to faint.

What a role! what a character!

Do I know her? I suppose so.

I’m not a normal person- I just play one in public.

[sneakrets]

Have you ever run away with a metaphor?

I’ve let one carry me halfway across the country and marry me in a barn with a patched roof. I’ve let a metaphor knock me up, but lost the baby to drink, smokes, and too many linking verbs.

[sneakrets]

In Philly

[sneakrets]

7abibi

I am sitting on the couch when suddenly

I look up and see the side of your hip

from an angle I had never seen

From this angle the hair swirls and eddys

tides move from belly to thigh

and the skin is sun-shy behind it

For some reason, I want to thank you-

I had almost forgotten

That I could be surprised by your body

[sneakrets]

Worry has shrunk me to the point

Where it would be easy to grow

But hard to imagine finding the space

(I was shocked when the doctor’s scale said 100, though I had woken that morning with the ache of a body collapsing inward)

Part of me wants to be a significant presence

To be difficult to lift, hard to knock down

To fill up a whole chair or bus seat

And make a visible dent in my pile of rice

Part of me wants to have extra self

In case I should ever find myself shrinking

......

And part of me does not

[sneakrets]

I want to hate you

Because of what you said

About the way I cut the fruit

And sat down too heavily on the bed

And the way I asked you how you felt

And the way my skin and breath smelled

But then you roll over

Exposing your thigh

And the bunch of grape-sized bruises

And the tubes that snake your sides

And the bones no longer wrapped in

A safe thickness of skin

I look up carefully

meeting the deep-sunk

darkness of your eyes

And I think that pain might be a person

who has borrowed your hands

And tongue for a time

[sneakrets]

We are not blank and yet

.

.

.

Women have always been the pages upon which men write their frustrations.

.

.

.

[sneakrets]

Anger is easier

A woman in great pain once asked me

Why do men want to hurt women?

It was such a big question-

carrying countries and centuries-

that I found myself reaching for

a helpful answer,

a professional answer,

an answer that would contain the question-

and coming up with I don’t know.

I find myself listening to stories of pain

and catching on fire

holding heat in my chest

and looking for something to burn

[sneakrets]

Unrest

Each time I begin to love, I take myself apart bone by bone

Tear out half my heart and bury all the unwanted pieces

I rebuild myself in a lovable, fuckable image

And bask in the glow of a man’s worship

I find myself ridiculing men for failing to notice

Accuse them of projecting enchantment onto my skin

But of course I am the fool

Again and again and again

For things buried alive seldom rest easy

and I find my guts twisting, 

my hips aching from forgotten desire