My Very Own Short Story

One thing you should
know about me:
I play all the parts
in my productions –
victim, perpetrator,
monster, child,
never beauty,
often beast.

I am Ahab,
Jezebel,
and Elijah
all at once;
sometimes I’m one
of the prophets;
sometimes I’m just
a great, free whale.

Weary years composed of
individual minutes gazing
from behind a stone face,
seeing with stone eyes
always dry
until I broke –
too brittle
I guess.

A recovering catharsis addict –
desperate to know I am
really here, behind,
within, around this
stiff automaton body;
desperate to be something
other than this

dirty diet
of ego self-contained love,
of small sleights,
of little hurts
to be kissed away
and magically made better.

That was before I broke.

Today I had one
of my good days:
ice glistened like glass
in this morning’s sun,
and I was productive.

Later the skies ripped apart
and fell in large wet chunks;
the weight of water washed
away everything –
out intimate spot,
out damned dirt,
out intimate guilt,
out damned world.

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