Diary Of A Long-Haired Girl

“In you, I see the heroines of Shakespeare’s tragedies.
You, unhappy lady, were
never saved by anybody.”
― Marina Tsvetaeva

I had long hair then. Jules had just made clear her indifference,

her wild desire for me to leave, and so I did, on the Greyhound.

The Soviets launched Laika the dog-

we sent rhesus monkey Sam into space;

I took pills from a baggie John pressed into my palm to stop me crying,

and I swung ahead without moving, dreaming of pissing on the whole Earth.

In Oregon, I met a guy. He said he liked Gordon Lightfoot,

"You've Been Talking In Your Sleep." I had never heard it.

He told me about himself, and I wondered, how do you know

I don't have a bomb in my boho bag?

How do you know I don't go around blowing up buses,

bulldozers, abortion clinics, banks?

When a woman broke my heart, sometimes I used to let guys fall for me.

It assuaged the hurt, kept me looking pretty

like a cut stem in a glass of sugar water that will die anyway, but more slowly.

It was riskless--I wouldn't love them;

I was just a hive of honey left out for the ants, a crust on the counter,

a sweet '56 left to rust and become art.

I cut my hair last spring. I gave up on love in 2009.

Look at my yard, I can't bear to clear the trash trees.

John put a shotgun in his mouth years ago, and I don't get high anymore.

I wonder if Laika slept at all,

I wonder if she dreamed of the alleys and garbage cans of Moscow?

I wonder what made me think of that guy on the bus through Oregon?

"I heard you softly whisper..."

I have given myself body and soul to half a dozen women and one man.

I live alone. The moon rises and sets.

Sometimes, in the morning, she is still there in the sky,

pale, beautiful, and if I spoke in my sleep, if I confessed anything,

she would never betray me, not from such a distance,

though I die in orbit, howling.

_______

For Play it Again, Toads 18. Image at top by Margaret Bednar. I chose Kerry's challenge.