Poetry
WORDS
My grandmother spoke words
to keep me strong against
nasty kids, condescending teachers, and
the things that my mother said out of anger
that was not directed at me.
She spoke those words so that
I would understand and not cry, or curse---
or even flinch against the weight of them--
of those Other WORDS...
So, at a young age, I learned to fight
words against WORDS-
When my grandmother died,
I said I would never want to hear
Words again-
at least not those same words
that she had spoken to me-
Because, even out of context, or paraphrased,
they belonged to HER- and I,
with a 15 year old logic and mishapen esteem,
was retiring those words...
My LOVER-the man whom I waited for
phone calls from, and silent encouragement of
of the eyes-
spoke WORDS to me---
Words that I undestood and wanted desperately to
to believe in.
He spoke some words to me that could not be taken
back.
I felt those words slip under my skin like
dangerously thin shards of glass---
Words that became embedded too deep past the
surface of short-term memory.
"You can't take them back!", I said to no one,
in an empty room, when he turned away.
"They're mine! They fit me like a second, softer skin."
And he walked away
and AWAY
until nothing was left but his words.
So I am trying to retire those words.
He doesn't deserve to own them, but
he does-
And I don't want to hear them spoken to me again.
I speak WORDS- in my car, and under my breath--and
onto blank pages with purple ball-point pens---
And the dead speak WORDS--
from their graves
and in my mind-
in my photos, and from under my skin.
(Their words poke through like tiny beads of
sweat on a clammy piece of skin.)
And sometimes they speak from beyond black print-
Sylvia Plath, Ann Sexton, Denise Levertov, Langston
Hughes--I hear them--
and they soothe me, or excite me-
Just words--but KNIVES just the same---
Words created and displaced-
I will shelter my child from them
when they crease her tiny face with pain-
Prevention of their impact and indelible marks.
(The only tattoos she will have are those that she
chooses to place on to her own skin willingly.)
I will tell her not to listen to them-
especially when they are spoken from between
moist lips--hot and silky against her neck.
I will build her a layer of thickness that will
bounce them off completely-
Listen! I am speaking words that I have never even
spoken aloud-
And I am retiring them as my pen slips away from the
paper-
completely-
Completion...
