Monthly Archives: January 2017

Drug addiction, emotional anorexia, identity

Games

I play the games I’ve been taught to play
To make my way past the edges of words.
Friday cocktails, diets and
Weekly starvation,
Cocaine;
Wanting the look that makes you want me.

Sex pulls me in deeper,
Sinking into my self-created world,
Incapable of understanding your words.

Those words you use
Just to get inside.

I use the same phrases, you know.
I win these games every time and
Lose a little bit of myself.

1998

#sexaddiction #isolation #cocaine #eatingdisorders #vulnerability#badboundaries #misconceptionsofself

pop culture

A Coherent Plot and Happy Ending

The days slip through my fingers without sensation

With hours of paid programming in the forefront of my mind.

Illusions seem more real: comedies, sitcoms, midevening drama on a screen:

Vibrant realities joking in technicolor.

I want to move in to the big house with plastic food and a tall picture perfect husband to fuck

when I come home from my six-digit salary job.

My life will have a coherent plot,

And every night a happy ending.

Abusive relationships, emotional anorexia

Cold Is Better Than Pain

sitting in the cold empty apartment you broke into to have

sex with me. I’m watching you sleep, wrapped up in the sleeping

bag I brought to keep us warm,

grasping it as though it were your only protection,

your only comfort.

I am afraid to wake you.

you might not recognize me, remember who I am

though you’ve known me (slept with me) for months.

you say you love me.

I don’t know what this means.

you might hurt me if I wake you.

cold is better than pain.

 

1992

abandonment, Drug addiction, emotional anorexia, identity, pop culture

Emptiness

Surrounded by the chaos of my possessions,

Smoke-stained walls plastered with faded photographs;

On the floor stacks of books.

Over the years my room has changed locations, holding me in like thoughts in conversations.

I am here, still;

A nearly empty bottle of Wild Irish Rose in my hand, cigarette burned down to the filter.

 

I am the unwanted gift left behind by men who couldn’t find enough room for the refuse of their lives.

Men who left me alone to drink, wanting a woman who couldn’t or wouldn’t think to match their own lack of substance.

 

I am an outdated model of a mastered game; trapped inside my own body.

There are dark circles under my eyes from too many wasted nights.

 

I am ignorant of abuse;

A happy and willing slave to the next man to notice my stone-blue eyes, the curve of my hip, the movement of my lips as I slowly inhale smoke from my cigarette.

 

Once,

I imagined I was beautiful, a man unwrapped me;

My body, not my mind.

I woke up to an empty bottle and a man I couldn’t remember next to me forcing his hand down my pants as my head spun.

 

I lie here pretending I don’t feel the pain,

Drinking, popping pills, eating chocolate.

I am a living, breathing stereotype, barely able to stand as I pull a pair of jeans over my widening hips, hold in my stomach as I zip myself into costume,

A little eyeliner, face powder, lipstick to complete the task

And I hardly recognize myself underneath this mask

Or remember who I was to begin with.

1993