Second Life

In my Second Life, I can’t fly
Nor can I read minds
Shape-shifting would be dope, but nah
My Second Life is my haven
My life without the fecund baggage of this one

We have three kids -
I said two was enough, one of each,
A Nuclear Family
But
The day we walked the youngest to kindergarten,
Backpack dwarfing her like an ancient tortoise,
Packed to the brim with crayons and paper and snacks and tissues and folders and promise and anticipation and and and
I cried like a faucet and begged for a third
Just one more with your sweet face
We would be so quiet in our joy,
Hoping that the vindictive universe wouldn’t notice
And assign the karma we earn in our contentment

In my Second Life
I know every detail of your body
I watch you age and change
Remembering youth with fondness (and eager fingers and mouth)
Mapping the beauty as if I could observe all the ancient millennial mountains form in one lifetime

In my Second Life
You savor every inch of my body,
Soft stomach and chewed nipples and bumpy stripes
Knowing it wears the vestiges of the life we created

In my Second Life
I could be happy

Mouth

I wish I had a grateful heart
A present mind
A more docile brain
Duller
I wish I was kinder
But I feed on cold vitriol,
The rage at the injustice

Pounding like a sledgehammer is one of my parents’ mantras
”Life isn’t fair”
Well fuck that
Fairness slunk away on wretched worn tiptoes long ago, with a chuckle or a whimper - who can tell?
”Life isn’t fair”
Tell me how the scales of justice tip
Toppling like a crane
Into the fat cash register mouth
She always gets what she wants
Never what she needs

2025

Another year gone by as I play catch-up
This year feels pivotal - but perhaps only due to my panicked obsession with numbers in multiples of five
(even, prime)
No, it stinks like rotting corpse, a cloying, putrid stench
Like Pigpen of Snoopy fame stumbling through a body farm
I can see the sweltering hot vapors of ripe funk even from here
As I turn the trusty (bloody) hourglass another (even) 12 times
12 times this year but maybe fewer the next and the next until the blood dries up
And if I could bear a glance as I pass a mirror, I’d see a slow-motion but otherwise effective cosplay of one of those wooden giraffe toys you never see anymore
You know the ones?
They fit just in the palm of your hand
Pushing the thick button-bottom collapses the spindly giraffe into a pile of bones
Those ones.

I’ll suck you dry with horrified, desiccated mouth
I’ll hate every second
Everything will pour through and back out the shaggy bottom
Because what was once merely empty now hangs ruptured with anger and atrophy
2025 is the trash pile out of which my flaming phoenix arises and shrieks
Too little, too late
Too bad, so sad

How can there be so much ahead and nothing left at all

Porch

We sat on the porch that night, inhaling the dense salt air to exhale it again
Listening to the rhythmic crash of the waves past the dune
Graciously serving each other the generous helpings reserved for dearest friends
Snippets of words and phrases danced around our heads in lilting timbre
Handing off and handing off and handing off again
A bit too warm, a bit flushed (a bit - or more - tipsy)
Like resting in a plush safe dumpling - don’t mind the sweet, sticky sweat -
I listened as the others wailed and gnashed their teeth over children growing up
I listened from outside myself
From inside myself
From atop my tower of trash dressed in ribbons and Lysol
Nodding along silently, thin lips stretched into my best approximation of smile-bedecked grimace
Me the half- (quarter-) mother
Inside-me’s diaphragm ballooning for the next rasping grating shriek no one will ever hear
I want to feel it too
The loss

Is a mother who’s not really a mother even a mother?
Because mothers who aren’t really mothers certainly don’t feel like mothers
They feel like gaping wounds and stones at the same time
The pitying look like a hatchet
And so I bury the gauze and the satchel as best I can - not very well, I know -
Anything to stave off the next inevitable blow

My tears
The pitying look
I stuff it down
My tears
The pitying look
I stuff it down
My tears
The pitying look
The warm hug as my arms dangle at my sides and I close my eyes over a thousand-yard stare
I stuff it down
I stuff it down
I stuff it down
So that when the next sinkhole opens I may not slip into it

Shower

It’s supposed to be a transformative experience, of sorts
(if others can be believed)
The hot water logically washes away the dirt
Slick frothing bubbles lend an assist
Droplets falling on tile like bursting static
What feeds others’ renewal leaves me frantic and exhausted
Sometimes crying desperately through the torrented rivulets already running down my face
That humid box is where the worst of it comes
Thoughts like arrows, the only time they fly fast and true
New and old and present slamming together as they rush and scurry to find purchase in my floral foam brain
Distractions be damned, those spiteful, single-tasked archers
I’ve yet to find an activity conducive to a calm disposition but
The thunk of my expansive forehead on withered wet stone urges me to attempt solace in the next

Worry

I often worry that I’m unique
Not peculiarly unique (no pixies or dreams but perhaps a hefty dose of mania)
But that I’m solitary,
Grotesquely Singular
I often worry that I’m not unique
Not in any way that matters
Swathing myself in sorrow like everyone else
Convinced the most pointed is reserved for me alone
When it’s the same run-of-the-mill fuckshit everyone hates
Another run-of-the-mill woman watching herself empty bit by bit with shoddy incredulous acceptance while she looks around like a child at the pool ready to show off his most mediocre dive to parents who’ve watched a thousand other mediocre dives
”Watch this!”
Watch as life trickles, then rushes, then trickles away
Each trickle a tsunami to her
Womb like a hard amalgam pebble, its silent throes necessarily muffled
I wish I could rest without a glut of tears
But I will only be a dry corpse

Quicksand

It settles like dust into my marrow,
Weightier than you’d expect
Slows my steps until I become an iron giant
Knee creak, drag heavy foot on heavy toe to fling it forward as momentum slaps it back to earth
It’s the very definition of insanity, really, this vapid optimism for the impossible thing, over and over and over,
Only to each month taste the acrid sting of reality
It shouldn’t be a surprise, should it? At this point?
I want nothing more than to free myself of the wretched claws of hope but I don’t know how
I don’t know how
I don’t know how to wriggle from its grasp whole or breathing

Worser

Sometimes my overly spicy brain wracks itself for torture
Moments like the prickers which burrowed themselves into summer clothing while I rolled in the sand dunes across the street
A snapshot of you and her
Ring and question
Wedding day with wedding dress,
Subsequent appropriately swollen belly
From this hidden vantage point I watch you plant a sweet kiss on the stretched, striped skin between you and your child
Yours and hers
Yours and hers
Yours and hers
Yours and hers
A languorous, sleepily lit Sunday afternoon, momentary respite from the stunted gray days of late winter
Again and again
Once more into delivery room to hold her clawing bloated hand as she grunts new life into the world
Again and again
A hideous movie replayed and replayed and replayed and replayed by a hideous man with a hideous projector
Just so I Know. So I Remember.
All that I lost before I even knew it was slipping away
All that she had and sold
All that they took and all that you gave
If only I could go back to counting prickers as I freed them from their hiding places
Maybe it could be different this time
Not so worse

Apeulogy

Yesterday I watched the earth roll up the sky, clouds and all, like a blanket
Gazed on as dirt ate water and air, gobbled the mess up like spun candy, no more than whirling sweet tufts disappearing into thick mud
I wondered what it wrought.
You told me when we met
You told me
And I believed you then
And I felt the same,
Having been worn away so painfully small
So when you opened me up
And everything in me burst open with new life
And craved new life with you
I was uncomprehending when you stepped off the path we’d forged onto one I never noticed you’d been clearing
And you told me
And my heart closed my ears
And so I set about loving you as hard as my bruised heart felt,
Fervently, frantically, desperately
You’d have no choice but to burst with me
But you told me
And you told me six years ago
And you told me a year ago
And you told me six months ago
And you told me yesterday
And I finally Hear You.
And I’m
Sorry
I
Couldn’t
Hear
Your
Silence
For
What
It
Was
You will never say the Words I Need to Hear
because you’ve said them already
just not to me
i
will
never
be
enough

Words

There are words that I used to say
There are words that I only say now
There are words that I only say inside my head
Those are the words I most wish I could get out
Wrench that crowbar until they fly
But I’m afraid that
After all this time
The pressure has filed them to razors
And I would give my life to save you pain

Inventory

Marriages: 2
Engagement rings: 1
Children: 2
Pregnancies: 6
Repossessed cars: 2
Credit score: stopped looking
Age of current car: 12 years
Suicide attempts: 1
Suicidal thoughts: Infinity
Age of oldest child: 18
Christmas mornings with children: 6
Christmas mornings with youngest child: 3
Miles to school: 43
Number of trips to school and back: Around 3,300 and counting
Age: 44
Viable eggs left: 0?
People who care about how many eggs I have left: 1
Current abdominal pain level: 6.8 and rising
Number of stepchildren: 5
Number I’ve met: 3
Number of kids THEY’VE squirted out: 10 and counting (ETA: apparently 11 and counting)
Number of kids they know/parent: 5-8?
Life satisfaction level: mid at most
Anger level: 6.8 and rising

Un-Equilibrium

Have you ever held something like that in your hand?
A delicate morsel of anything at all
Soft and sweet
A tender puff which leeches protective feelings,
The grounding knowledge that it would never survive on its own,
Poor little thing.
Did you know that, sometimes, moose will get tipsy on fermented apples?
Can you imagine -
An enormous knobby-kneed behemoth,
Crashing pendulously like a sailor,
To-and-fro,
Carving the widest swath as others stumble to safety
I wonder how this pair combines
Wonder at the unexpected convergence and adoption of the other’s most disastrous faults
Coagulated into wretched creature
- Can you see it? -
One can
One wears it as a cape
And is grateful for the mouth-watering scrapings left in its wake

Fuckheads

What I thought would be run-of-the-mill pavement turned out to be some sort of vaguely crunchy sludge.

That’s okay. I’m not driving anyway. 

I shift my weight to accommodate age- and hardware-addled hips

Crossing and uncrossing my legs,

One gliding up and over, running along the other’s calf in a move that might be provocative in another place, but in this case is simply necessity borne of cramped space

I no longer put my feet on the dash except on very special occasions

(I trust him on the road but no one else, and he’s some sort of cosmic magnet for the most brazen of fuckheads)

The trees pass by but more languidly, and I see that each has put on a snow-day character

Some fat like a mossy robot covered in royal icing

Others flinging their suds to the highway and sky alike in a frenzied rave

I think my favorites are those who pack their adornments as a gloppy Elmer’s glue tiara, diverting attention from a perhaps-more-spare-than-inspires-confidence midsection where trunks gleam around stubby once-were-branches

Backs straightened like the fucking royalty they are

It’s 2024

The advancing year feels like road spikes behind and a concrete wall ahead, the spikes too close now to reverse and still salvage the tires (though the fee was paid)
The digit changed but it’s the same things making me feel shitty?

This is the year I concede
Already the emptiness feels like fuzzy cozy fullness
I hunger for nothing but sallow desperation, eating my angst to generate it anew
A fetid phoenix whose rotted wings drip with long-putrid vinegar
With acid

This year
I create a suitable husk for the dusk to come
I’ve seen it in dreams - the dense velvet lampshades consuming light like grinding wheels -
fading, fading to nothing
despite my frantic efforts

I know what seethes in the dark, what holds us hostage (and you without your shackles)
What desperately desires to claim what it almost had (tasted)
My will is deplete
I soak up the infectious sludge
to
Hasten
and leave Nothing behind, not the echo of her cries to remember, to be patient, to have faith
Faith like a ghost ship dressed as the sweetest promises you ever heard, the promises already promised to another and another

And in the end, the scales are balanced, by all accounts
All accounts but one,
That account which blandly smiles until the stories are done, storing up the tears to fill the feather dust in her pillow
The feathers never share secrets
Not even not-secret secrets, the quaking shit-monster demons which drag themselves from room to hoarded room in my bloated, empty shadow

I wrack my brain to conceive of what consequences I have birthed
And come up far from empty. And so
I will sit in the gloaming, in the strangled light cast over the reaping sown in my basest anguish

I would never tell her this, but

Measured accurately, measured objectively,

I think she was right

Pre-Mourning

First, love was the filmy layer to be superimposed over boys
for whom I yearned but never knew
Then, languishing in replacement love,
a stain from benign and anxiously perceived “wild days”
Neither patient nor kind
Not an elaborate loom,
with threads stretching fingers across to grasp and weave into irrevocable fabric,
the warmest, strongest knit
More an inevitable hammer to be wielded for my own good
But now -
Now
Terror seeps from my pores
My stomach a lackluster container for its dense weight
I devour grief
Hoard it to borrow against the wave to come,
In which some version of myself forever tumbles like a rag doll in the crashing, roiling pain
And this is love,
The horror of the innate knowledge of not knowing
The certainty of collapse
The tenuous hold on the most precious and fragile
As we scrape and scramble to hold the delicate bloom just a few moments longer
And the interest always always comes due

All I Wanna Do is Make Love to You

In the interest of full disclosure, the title of the song is technically “All I Want to Do Is Make Love to You” but we all know that’s not what the inimitable Ann Wilson actually sang. Nor should she have, obvs.

I should also point out that this is one dope-ass song and Heart is a dope-ass band. With that said, this particular song cracks me up every time I hear it. Even in 1990 when it was released, the lyrics were…. questionable, at best. But in 2023? HARD YIKES but also I have a lot of questions. So, since this blog is just my own li’l loquacious circle-jerk, imma do what I want and give a breakdown of this legit banger that should be more of a cautionary tale than it is, clearly.

Let’s dive on in, shall we?

It was a rainy night
When he came into sight
Standing by the road
No umbrella, no coat

So, here comes Ann, driving in the rain. She spots a dude on the side of the road. Pretty simple, right? But, like… no umbrella OR coat? What is this guy’s deal? I’m sure there’s a lot of the story we’re not getting - but I’d love to know how an adult human ends up on a road at night in the rain with no accoutrements. I’ll tell you for damn sure that I would not be stopping for this psychopath (or, worse, stone-cold moron), not even if it were 1968 when such shenanigans were commonplace.

So I pulled up alongside
And I offered him a ride
He accepted with a smile
So we drove for a while

ANN. GIRL. This is how you get murderdurdurrrred. As someone who has devoured true crime documentaries and podcasts, this CANNOT end well.

I didn’t ask him his name
This lonely boy in the rain
Fate, tell me it’s right, is this love at first sight?
Please don’t make it wrong, just stay for the night

Okay sooooo they didn’t do standard introductions when he got in the car? Also… did she have a towel to put down, or is he just willy-nilly sopping up his rain-butt with her fancy 1990 cloth interior?? Ew. Regardless, I can’t say whether I truly believe in love at first sight, but, Ann. It’s probs not. And why are we now talking about staying for the night? Like, in the car? Anywho, let’s keep goin:

All I wanna do is make love to you
Say you will, you want me too
All I wanna do is make love to you
I’ve got lovin’ arms to hold onto

Well. That escalated quickly. So now Ann’s asking for a ticket to poundtown, which, like… honestly, get it, girl, but I’m still concerned that your standards are really fucking low.

So we found this hotel
It was a place I knew well
We made magic that night
Oh, he did everything right

Bish you know that was a MOTEL, and we know why you know it well. I need to know how many times she’s found a bedraggled roadmuffin in her travels and brought dude back to this place to bang.

He brought the woman out of me
So many times, easily
And in the mornin’ when he woke
All I left him was a note

  1. Hell YES get that orgasm babyyyyy

  2. I’d venture to guess that most guys would LOVE to wake up after sex with a stranger to an empty bed and a note.

I told him I am the flower, you are the seed
We walked in the garden, we planted a tree
Don’t try to find me, please don’t you dare
Just live in my memory, you’ll always be there

HOLD UP bitch WTF. A couple stanzas ago, you were asking if it was love at first sight, knowing full well all you wanted was a damn baby? AND YOU HAVE A DUDE AT HOME ALREADY? Also, can we talk about how on earth she would even know if she’s pregante/pargonate/pragnat literally the next morning? I mean, Moist Road Guy might be infertile, and then you’re just taking alllll kinds of chances with STDs for a big ol’ nothin’. Plus, I didn’t tell people I was pregnant until I was at least 20 weeks along. This chick be telling people THE MOMENT OF IMAGINED CONCEPTION? I call bullshit.

Also: I’m not even going to go into the reproductive assault part of this, because I’m sure he wasn’t exactly raring to throw a condom on, but, like… you can’t just ON PURPOSE GET PREGNANT WITH SOMEONE’S BABY without their permission and then be like thanks byeeeeeeeeeee

ALSO also: Ma’am, if he thinks you’re having his baby I GUARANTEE he is not going to look for you. It’ll be more like It Follows but in reverse, with the babydaddy forever walking away from wherever you are.

Then it happened one day
We came ‘round the same way
You can imagine his surprise
When he saw his own eyes

Yeah, that’s a mindfuck. She did give him fair warning, though. Would be funnier if she meant that someone else had Moist Road Guy (tm)’s actual eyes, but then I guess he wouldn’t be able to see them.

I said, “Please, please understand
I’m in love with another man
And what he couldn’t give me, oh-oh
Was the one little thing that you can”

NOW we get to the truth of the matter. Hubs at home is shooting blanks, so obviously the least unhinged solution is to find a rain-soaked hitchhiker to spray his DNA up in your babymaker. I have SO many questions, though.

Does dude at home know she’s doing this? I feel like he must, because if she knows he’s infertile, HE probably knows he’s infertile, and he’s prolly like “Yeah find you a potential serial killer lol”… but it sure seems like she’s maybe done this a bunch of times since she knows the mo-er, hotel, well.

Why is she assuming that rando guy would be just fine with having his crotch fruit out in the world all willy nilly? I mean, I don’t think 99% of men would care so long as they don’t have to pay support, but there’s gotta be someone who’s freaked out by that?

Not for nothing, and I know it couldn’t exactly work the same way, but what if the genders were reversed? I bet NOW you’re feeling really itchy. I sure am. Yeesh.

A Character Study

I had a bit of an epiphany this morning. While I fully realize these are thoughts which should be discussed with a therapist, I don’t have that option at the moment for myriad reasons and also what is the POINT of having a BLOG if I can’t VOMIT MY STUPID THOUGHTS ONTO IT. Also, no one reads it anyway.

So, it’s pretty clear that many of my life choices have stemmed from insecurity and low self-esteem. Married at 21 to the first guy who showed any interest in me - because obviously it’s meant to be if he can stand me! Better snatch him up! Then I spent ten years making myself smaller and smaller, and STILL never got to whatever size would’ve fit within the confines of the person he found it acceptable for me to be.

For a long time, I blamed him for a lot of the misery in our marriage. But the thing is, I allowed him to treat me that way. The reasons are probably deeply seated in some as-yet-undiscovered childhood trauma, but we show people how to treat us - and I showed him.

In my first “grown-up” (not really, just full-time) job after college, I was coerced? groomed? into a relationship with a man more than twice my age. I felt like I couldn’t say no, but in hindsight, I’m not sure I really tried all that hard. It’s difficult to argue with a fit, 6’2” man who gropes you in the breakroom.

I think what I’ve realized is that I’ve ALWAYS played the victim. Growing up, I always felt like my parents (my mom, especially) preferred my brother, that he was the golden child. In truth, I don’t think that’s accurate; but he was certainly always “easier” than I was. Not emotional like me. So smart he had to take math classes at night because they ran out of math for him at school. Effortless slimness juxtaposed with my teenage fluff. He was also gifted with the coveted family left-handedness and stunning singing voice, both of which passed me over.

I don’t think my parents showed him overt favoritism, thinking back, but I just always KNEW, deep down, that he was better than me by any barometer. And he still is; he has a great job with a great company, still married to his high school sweetheart, living in a beautiful house with their three kids. A nice portfolio which would, I’m sure, preclude any desperate calls to daddy begging for $200 so the lights don’t get turned off.

I felt the scales tip every time my dad gave me a “helpful” diet tip, or my mom chided me for being too emotional, or purposely ignored me when I asked her a question just to blow up if I asked again. I learned to be quiet, after a while. I wasn’t terribly good at it, mind you, but life was easier when I was amenable and silent.

With all that said, I think I FEEL like a victim, and I PLAY the victim, but I’m not, really. I actively put myself in situations in which I can continue to play that role. It was easy in my first marriage. Tougher in my second, but I can still play second fiddle to my husband’s first wife, who once called me “a downgrade in every possible way.” I laughed at that statement initially, but she gave birth to his children and lived the life I crave, so who’s the winner here? Is anyone?

And so, here I am. Leaning into playing the supporting role once again. Happily(?) putting my wants and dreams aside for someone else’s. Waiting, knowing that I’m not really waiting, but just biding time until the choice is completely out of my hands - which, let’s face it, it always was.

The role into which I’ve thrust myself only has one real task: to smooth things over and make as much as possible easier for everyone else, perhaps especially to my own detriment. Make sure that my discomfort makes everyone else comfortable. Ultimately, I’m a pushover. A doormat. On top of that, I’m a poor communicator. Maybe a more apt description is terrified communicator, because I’m perfectly capable of speaking words which say what I mean, but I am incapable of saying them rationally in the moment, so I just… don’t say anything. I don’t say anything until I’m at an absolute breaking point, and/or I’m terribly drunk (or, more likely, some combination of the two), at which point my conversation consists mostly of tears and snot and angst. Which, of course, only seems to result in the other person waiting until I’m done verbally spewing whatever rant I’ve been rolling around in the back of my mouth for weeks, a stricken look upon his face, so that he can shove it onto the back burner again and go back to the status quo. You know, like an adult deals with a frustrating child who won’t stop begging for candy.

I’m not sure what I’m trying to say, really. Maybe I’m just trying to move through this feeling and get to the other side, whatever that might look like. If it exists, and isn’t just the sweet oblivion of failure. Sometimes I’m not sure that I even want to get to the other side. Because that means giving up the one thing I want, and I don’t know what the nail in that coffin is even shutting in. I’m doubtful it contains anything I truly need to shed. It might just contain me.

So, yeah. Just your neighborhood fuck-up over here, fucking it up. Is there really any other way to live?

Double Dutch

Leaning in and out in hiccups
Looking,
Waiting,
Focused.
Searching for the perfect split second to leap
I try to catch your eye
Find the rhythm in your easy dimpled smile
but
My hiccups fall out of sync as your eyes dart away, mouth fixed as stone
And oh!
I remember
I remember that you’ve done this many times before,
And how weary your arms must be,
Strong and warm and tired,
And so I lean back
Stilling myself
For You
Devouring the spoiled sweetmeats
Grateful for the preparation
And I wrap the decaying mantle, reluctantly knitted from your relief, around my shrinking shoulders
And shiver away again
Again