Humanity: Raw & Unfiltered
Five-year gap It could have been ten, I was so young then Just sixteen, you were just ‘old’ Policing my youth, like you always knew better Me and Molly, your mall rats We partied late into the night and brought you coffee at sunrise You scolded our morning-after-those Wildberry Vodka Read more
He had already locked the front door so she couldn’t escape, couldn’t open her cage.
Perhaps he uttered a prayer to whomever murderers utter prayers too. Perhaps he gave last rights to himself, took communion, had a last meal, said goodbye to his mother, brother, sister, children, the cats.
The town was Show Low
named for a poker hand
way up in the White Mountains
of wild western Arizona
how very ironic
we met in a poker room
at the Dancing Eagle
The most beautiful moment I had in college (aside from the day I bought myself a vibrator or learned to make poached eggs) was when I went to the lake, picked up a flat stone the size of a driver’s license and threw it. It skipped four times, just like that. I didn’t need CJ to show me how to do it, reveal any special secret to me. In the end, I didn’t need him, didn’t want him, at all.
Then, in a wine soaked haze, I realize what the worst part about this is.We are always on guard against the men in the streets. The ones who whistle while we walk. We guard against the men at the bars, whose smiles turn to snarls upon rejection. We guard against the men online whose thumbs could spell “slut” without help from their eyes. We are almost always on guard. We almost never feel safe.
for my part I don’t deserve you
but yet you believed in me
before I believed in myself
and on one trembling knee
I am humbled by your love
Next time don’t lie
When you sit close and sigh
You’re married already
So forget going steady
As I stand at the base of “The Giant,” a near three-hundred footer, I can think of nothing but our girls. How they swam to us against all odds. How they too are delicate yet strong. How they feel pressed against us, how their hair always smells like baby powder. These trees are magnificent, but they have nothing on the wonder of the thirty-year-old fuck ups who made the most beautiful creatures I’ve ever seen.