Small Wooden Boat

Small Wooden Boat

Yesterday, a stranger rubbed my back for about three seconds
when she thanked me for telling her
that the bookstore next door to my work
had closed down.
She had driven there with her family all the way from Michigan.

It was the happiest I can remember being in months.

What I'm trying to say is,
I miss being touched so badly
that the warmth of a strange woman's hand on my back
was it's own month long affair.
with mistakes and beauty and concert halls and
waiting by the phone
and waiting by the phone
and waiting by the phone.

Last night,
I saw your picture again.
The details in your face,
exactly how I remember.
The wrinkles from laughing too hard,
the space between your slightly parted lips
reminded me of moonshine
and looked as pretty as the night you first let me touch you.

I don't need to look at your photograph anymore though,
because the image of you is forever burned behind my eyelids.
It seeps in the cracks of my broken heart,
it is my song now-
I am my mother's daughter.
I can't tell the difference between love and rage
and nooses so often look like marriage proposals.
and gunshot wounds look like red lipstick kisses.
I am the broken-hearted.
I am the fool
that fucked a married woman
and fell in love with her.

I fucked a married woman and fell in love with her.

She invented a woman's body.
She invented brushing her finger tips along my collar bone.
she invented nipples and heavy breathing and sex shivers.
She invented my internal organs closing in on itself
every time I miss her.
and I miss her every time.

I miss her glasses
and her soft shoulders,
and her drippy faucets and broken windows
and how her ship couldn't withstand raging waters.

But, I believe ships were meant for sailing,
so I remade a small wooden one from the leftover scraps of me.
My achor has since been rendered useless,
but, my small wooden boat lets me cry
and sails me slow.
It lets me be alone,
lets me spell out star words and moon songs
and never scoffs at me for missing you.

I believe that time heals all
but time is too fucking slow
so I'm taking my boat across seas
to find me a new coast.

I want to be cleansed of everything that speaks you.
I want the salty seas to rub the dirt of fucking you off my body.
I want to lay on it's naked shores and believe in God again.
I want a new song.
I want a new poem.
I want a new mouth and new eyes
and I want to be able to get out of bed in the morning.
and when it do, it having nothing to do with you.

Because I still had hands before I met you,
and they still know how to hold a paint brush
and point to constellations
and write vigorously in water stained notebooks
and move like a conductor's when I talk about
feminist theory
or how much I love Cher
or how humpback whales sing to each other
in a language we were never meant to understand.

Look at me living without you.

So I'll take my wooden boat.
and I'll sail the seas and point to constellations
and paint the colors I see
and shout broken heart poems to Orion
and he'll stick them all in his belt
and thank me for my wooden ship words.

I'll shout back "but it's so tiny!"
and he'll say, "I know! that's what makes it wonderful!"

So to the shattered hearts,
build your tiny wooden boat
and sail the blood red seas,
like you were born the captain of your ship,
The stars and oceans will thank you for your vigor.

and you will have never looked so beautiful.

So sail, Goddamnit. Sail.