Catch Me Running

It is without much ceremony, the act of
living so I am bored enough to fall
madly in love with myself.

In all honesty, I have been
known for showing a little skin under
short sundresses, some thigh
and a handful of summer freckles

But I am as much of a play on words
as the next person, never stopping
all this changing and the second
everything moves upwards and
onwards is the second that I
forget that someone new
is breaking out of me to make
a name and a place
for all this mess and all this joy
and every moment of our
humanity

She looks every year
of my twenty-two birthdays so far
which
is to say, she looks like nothing
at all but the height of the mountains
in a city that she was born in
but hates with a passion
and the litre of ocean water that was poured
into her eyes the day that she came into
this world? Well that can be followed
anywhere on the globe
with a coast to it.

So, what can I say now except
I have turned my chin up at less
and you know by now that
my skin is braille, each beauty
mark mapping a different world
in my mind than the one I’m in
and so I write
to get it all out of me, like turning
your palms upwards
and putting a knife to your
own skin
just for the blood.

I find fewer and fewer reasons
to do anything but hustle
in this place, flatter than my
grandmothers porch, busier
than the busiest day
of the year, with everyone
always moving to you, around
you or through you.

I have known only a few things
in my life but I know that I am
made for something more like
this, the crowds, the tastes
and the smells, the faith
that pulses under each
street lamp and on every
corner that we are all
alone but together

now, I am softer and softer
like a flower in the sun, looking like
something
blooming and with it I find
such intimacy in all
the places that I had never thought to look
and isn’t that where it all begins?

and lights and burns out and lights again
with every carton of cigarettes
that I have ever tasted.

With a smile sharper than my own tongue
and almost velvet charm
like my favorite black dress
that shows more of my back than of my
thighs
there is no where
and I have no idea
how it is
I could have learned all these new habits
and desires that come from my mouth,
and ring in my ear, the very
kinds of things you truly have
not one word for

It is only in the way I watch myself in
mirrors like I might escape
that I realize
I am not a creature to be known
or understood anymore, the word
used to catch my attention
is one one syllable too long, always
mispronounced or missing a letter
and it has no solid meaning.

I am serious about nothing more than
myself, than the weather
and poems that speak of
passionate sex
while these parts, foreign
settle themselves in
and I begin again
anew as the girl buttoning up
her shirts, still showing a little
too much skin, shaving my legs
in the middle of winter with
the simple truth
of change and changing, filled
and filling with the weight
and the lightness
of a different woman now
and the cold here is not as bitter
as it once was

So I have started running again
and that is how I find my new language, entire
beginning with
the way a man comes up
behind me and zips my dress closed from
the bottom of my spine and afterwards
leaning in to taste the nape of my neck,
and ending with my favorite flowers lined
up in rows
all down the avenue on the snowiest
afternoon of the year,
handed to me and later thrown
into the trash
a sunflower for every letter
of the alphabet so just

catch me if you can, using old textbooks
on biology and art history. I’ll be somewhere
In this big old city with my hand outstretched
grazing my own, blood-red mouth
and
wearing a dress shorter
than the time it takes to sin,
not caring if you call me or not