Ouroboros

I have walked around this dirtball planet with three tiny shards of glass stuck in my right foot for ten years(ten years?)(ten years.) And I would rather walk around with them in there another ten than continue to delude myself that love is anything more than being sometimes sex partners with the enemy's enemy; is all a bloodless blood-curdling ritualistic bloodletting backlit by a strenuous exercise in self-loathing; when you're a girl like me, anyway. I wish I was dumb and a better liar but I did not even cry this time and the no sound of teardrops falling is unmistakeably a sign of progress. Only rage like a reticule, which is like ridicule but with two different letters and one hundred percent more crosshairs.

I couldn't sleep facing him but I couldn't turn my back on him, either, so I slept on my stomach and had dreams about the surprisingly good marriages of girls from the Midwest with names like Melanie, whose ambitious husbands took care of them when they had the morning sickness and the unusual, imaginary kitchen tools she used to feed a shit-ton of kids of all difference races and ages. He was a doter. The oldest white girl had that irritating not cute, freckled, redheaded stepchild look about her but had an impressive knowledge of mobile devices and an enviable shoe collection and eventually won me over. And the dad, he did what I do for a living, and he was a little misogynistic for my taste, even in my dreams, but he was a well-intentioned man, which later surprised me to learn. And the wife was smarter than she seemed and knew he was well-intentioned and excused his foibles and took her vows and closed the door on so many men who might have loved her more. And their dining table was like a picnic table you'd find at the park but it was inside the house, in their small, low-ceilinged breakfast nook with sautillo tile floors and hanging, indoor plants and an ugly, crooked Tiffany knock-off ceiling pendant. I helped set the table and took one bite of spaghetti to be polite and then excused myself, because I really must be getting back home, my husband needs me, is waiting for me, to relieve him.

Speaking of him, he doesn't listen to my dreams and he will never do more than skim this tripe for the liquefied fat accumulated at the top, and that's only if its easy to get at, because there is no secret in my garden and there are so many hundreds of people out there, all who just can't wait to undress, actually or metaphorically, or show off their command of English slang or just keep his smart mind company, which a donkey like me could never successfully do. Gluing my eyes together might be the rightest way.

What IS that thing called? The snake terminally eating itself? Getting disjointed. Writing awesome stuff. Dying alone. And he will say to his future her about me, "Aww, isn't it so cute? How she fakes being smart?" And he will be right. It is cute. And then they will go do whatever it is that smart people in love do. Go look at art or intellectually mutually masturbate over the same book or something. They will do a lot of walking in cities and have pretty decent sex and he will think to himself, "She is so cool!" She will be the girl of his dreams because she has transformed him and he doesn't have to be in love with regret anymore. It is a personal tragedy for me that I couldn't be her, but I am not that kind of girl. I was only fake being it. Its just that I was brought up in a family and in a culture where I was led to believe that I could be anything, even the President or a scientist if I wanted, because I was above average smart and not offensive to look at, and this is the Do Anything Age, so you can see how it was not a malicious fake. I really did believe I could be everything to someone.

I am reading your old stuff now, from back when, whenever that was, when I dared to dream the impossible dream, and was so immature and believed everything was about me. It is torture, as I see myself in the prequel, speeding past the stop! fucking stop! signs. Cringing, now crying, the sound of no progress at all, a red-faced snot bubble-nosed baby, with a baby, trying to lift up my shirt. This is after editing; take it heavily.

Exceeding the Recommended Dose

Oh, I know her
She used to follow me every where I'd go
And its so sweet
Now she's sleeping with a boy I know
The boy I know
Knows a pretty girl in every town
And the way they look
They were made to pin each other down
And everyone in here needs a shove
Or a stomp on the foot
So she'll get the Look Book
He'll get the Cook Book
And they will consummate their marriage
In California
In a car
Parked inside a tree
Its true, I can only relax when his hand is in the small of my back
And this is the sound
Of my resonance
My dissonance
My constance
My consonants
My constant
Erection
.