By Stosh Elizabeth Loeser
It’s after midnight and I am still not dreaming just yet.
Instead, I am awake in mania - in my own madness.
when my head is not spinning from all of my missing you,
I am back in my burning body
but only for .8 seconds
and I go back and forth and back and forth like this for as long as I’m in my waking state.
when I am pressed up in my body and so-called “present”,
I feel the fire on my shoulders and the empty pit in my lower belly again.
You’re glued to these pieces, too, ya know? …
and no, it seems I can’t escape you
and you left four months ago, today
but who’s counting…
I can only tell you that I am not the same
and worse, I can’t name what all is really different…
See, you dumped your love and your life story into my body like I was free storage and then you just up and left all unpacked, without taking any of your belongings—all of your things are still living Here
You act like I’m strong enough to endure all of this.
was it because I told you all of my traumas?
all of the moments that we spent in private communion,
at these same exact hours as I’m sitting up right now, alone,
when I let every Truth roll off of my tongue like it was born to tell You,
You took for granted a Real woman’s love.
They’ve lied to us ladies,
men DO abuse power!
they abuse it without having to even use their bare hands anymore.
the sneaky ones, anyway.
you know the ones..
you’ve met Him and Him and Him
and you smiled in his face with the one it took you an hour to put on before arriving here tonight
and he did absolutely nothing to deserve it
but you did it anyway,
that tells me EVERYTHING I need to know about a woman.
He doesn’t love you
or us,
or anyone, so it seems…
and he doesn’t love me either.
he just loved that I was born cursed with the color fire around my pupils, false promises and daddy issues.
he just loved that I was born with large breasts and its because of this figure that I am so “motherly”
so caretaking, caring, codependent…
cut me a break already!
So I sit here after midnight,
writing, repenting, repeating lines from pages before like my life depends on it
when does it stop already?! …
I am a spinning wreck
a tornado of a woman that you—no, I used to know…
regretting. forgiving. repeating
[for eternity, like all Women before me]
If I collected all of the pages of the books I’ve filled up
and scanned for one common thread,
one word would be in blazing, bright RED,
“FIRE”
Inflamed in the most bloody and brutal of contrasts,
literally and figuratively speaking
I have been on fire for as long as I have been breathing
and I feel it on top of my pale white skin.
it’s why I apply this color to the top of my crown, so that they know
—they know that when they see this hot heated bitch, they instantly run the other way
or worse,
they run closer towards me like a Ram.
like I’m a fun challenge and I am interested in the fight.
but news flash,
I’M NOT!
