Amputation

[sevendeadlyfun]

It's different. This time,

I don't wait for the healing

to happen gradually, don't wait

for your things, the things

you left,

to find their places.

I sweep them away,

sweep you away

because it cannot be that you are here

and not-here. I already feel the dull heavy confusion,

the part of me that is you

amputated.

life after is awkward

limbs that lie

uncooperative in bed and the apartment

an alien landscape, feeling foreign

I don't speak the language

of loss.


While I am not cool enough to turn my fanfic hobby into something professional, I am a published poet. Yeah, it sounds just as cool when you say it to people in real life. They're all "Huh. Really?" because poetry is not something Americans, as a whole, are comfortable with. In fact, most Americans read all the poetry they will ever read during high school and manage to successfully avoid it thereon. So saying you're a poet, in an American context of high-powered jobs and high-rate mortgages, is akin to admitting you moonlight as a gloryhole attendant. People are confused that you'd admit something like that so openly, but no one wants to be unliberal or bigoted about your personal choices. If you want to be a broke loser, who are they to judge?

Actually...I'd make more in the gloryhole.

But, 48 hours into my husband's third deployment, I'm just trying to spring clean my head. And if anyone wants to con/crit (or better yet, write me some Spike/Xander gloryhole porn), I promise I won't lose my mind. I can separate the criticism of my words from the criticism of my feelings.