i don't know what psychiatrists do on the weekends
maybe they knit lumpish scarves or burn toast badly setting the fire alarm off on a red-faced tantrum screaming throughout the 12 by 10 apartment maybe they decide to go back to bed for a few more hours burrowing under a pile of laundry that could use ironing or soap there is an iron in the sliver of a closet it's on the top shelf the detergent is on the bottom but maybe the psychiatrists are just too tired to open the door and are breaking out with adult acne there's a mirror in the hallway they must pass in order to retrieve these cleaning supplies and they can't face themselves not today maybe they forget to call their mothers but can't stop dreaming about their exes and maybe it's always raining in their part of California the newspaper always sits at the bottom of a puddle all the college friends are married with kids and don't sleep but the psychiatrists sleep all the time maybe they didn't plan for the future to unfold this way were always told that they were too smart for a sinkful of brown mugs that used to be blue maybe the psychiatrists just skipped their medication last week there was too much paperwork to do not enough paid hours to be patient with themselves
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10 things i wish i'd said
1. no which is to say absolutely not 2. i'm sorry 3. it was me who wrote on the walls. i wanted to feel like a ghost but didn't want the consequences. please don't hit me anyway 4. i didn't mean to crumble us, i just wanted to see what was on the inside 5. get away from me you have bruised me for the last time. don't touch me, don't look at me, don't come near me. if you do, i will call the police. if you do, i will call your mother. 5. if you see me change my mind and start to retrace my steps, please stop me. protect me from myself. i don't know who is safe anymore 6. you are my kind of person. i'm just afraid of what everyone else will think i hate that you still stand with me anyway 7. when i said that i'd remember your smile if you died i really meant, help me 8. mommy, thank you for my double-lidded eyes for my perfect teeth for the leftover Toblerone and Filipina throat, full of song it kills me to make you sad 9. to tell the truth, i wanted you to stop me from leaving 10. hey, can i sit with you? i don't have anyone here too How to insert a tampon
according to my mom you break your virginity in half and bless the boy you give it to and when he eats it you become lighter there is less God in your bowl You spread your legs and he spreads his fingers and God flows out of you The boy makes more room for himself in you, displacing more of the baptismal water that you were flushed with at birth a balloon ready to pop with all that holy pressure and you widen, stretch, bigger than your religion ever allowed women to get unless they were carrying a man's child and when it's done, you can insert a tampon you are now shaped to accommodate one Caught between a man and a woman
I can tell you that there is still too much man in the picture. Look somehow femininity is catnip for people who want to get high off of eating it and both men and women have tried to make me their chew toy The men are raised to think woman is weakness, is man with missing parts, is fucked up and fucked with so it's the man's duty to manifest our destiny, colonize the wild out of my body Women are raised to think man is power and the absence of power is a vagina or if not that, then anything else that begs to be beaten So when the men molt women step into the exoskeleton as if even a dead man's skin is permission enough to rule This isn't over
because I'm still afraid of water which is to say I'm afraid of sinking or forgetting how to swim and my toes touch the bottom in your shallow tides I don't know if I will still float if I go deep don't know if I'll still see the lights on shore, if I sail too far to know whether I'm closer to home or the point of no turning back And yet, I want to see what creatures slither deep if they need eyes to see it's dark down there. I'd have to feel my way around which increases my chances of getting bitten which I'm more afraid of than drowning I can still make a grave in the shallow end Poetry has found my sisters
that I never knew I had that I had always wished for and are lovelier than I'd planned they braid my hair and mirror my music I can walk with them forever I'm afraid of water so
I live a fishbowl existence looking in at all the creatures bumping around swimming with an ease that is foreign to my clumsy tongue so I sit quietly hoping to spontaneously sprout gills to grow webbing between my toes until then I confetti the surface with fish flakes hoping one will notice me invite me for a dip i think America is trying to kill me
or i think my confusion is eating my brain i can't quite figure out which parts of me are mine so my immune system attacks all of them in hopes i'll get the right enemy my friends all think i'm crazy like, nothing will hold you back but you, Kat this is the land of the free to be whoever you want but really, they don't know what i see in the mirror i see intruder in my own skin, hyphen in my identity somehow the American and Asian and queer and woman parts of me don't fit together naturally so i'm putting them in boxes packing them up in neat little piles defining where they go with black Sharpie on one, glutton. my American always keeps me wanting more quiet. my Asian doesn't want me to say it split. my queer has fomo, it can't figure out who to love next weak. my woman wants me to wait for someone else to figure it out for me and i'm an honest human i want my truths bursting in air giving proof to the night that i am still here oh, say, does that fit in today's narrative i'm losing track of my story and every time i sit down to write an Asian poem i can't stop spitting about my home state New York and how much i love bagels but one time a Jewish guy kissed me, got yellow fever, and died of the heat so maybe i'm not the kind of Asian you want me to write about i can't stop thinking about my baptism and how gay that shit is how my mother failed as a parent when i started wanting women how i'll never be saved, heaven auctioned my welcome mat and i could buy it back if i sold out my bisexuality and finally accept that a man will always be inside of me wo(man) i could never be complete without your dick i could never compete without sucking up to this shit system where feminism isn't a given but a privilege some people call it capitalism i call it, forgetting that people who don't look like you are still people or "America" for short we have red blood on white hands that beat minority bodies blue i'm saying that we are complicit too when we forget that model minorities exist only to demonstrate how to bow properly but the darker your skin, the harder it is to straighten back up and every time i sit down to write a unity poem my mind draws a blank my hands draw a question mark because i don't know what unity is i am a body bag of puzzle pieces that when fit together show a picture of my obituary listing all the ways i've died trying to segregate the equal parts of my identity i hope it tells you the truth and i hope you are listening cus i wrote this for you i mean, i died for you i mean, i died of uncertainty i don't want you to die at war with yourself too no more fallen soldiers who in another life were just the American, Asian, queer, woman parts of you once before this country issued a draft and made them shoot each other know that your identities don't belong in boxes, i mean coffins it's hard to love yourself if you aren't alive so think of the context breathing is a different experience when above ground than when buried in it so have mercy on the parts of you America has condemned you are beautiful even when your reflection forgets this puzzle will solve itself if you let it one hour behind in Chicago time
i submit my organic chemistry homework one hour later than i'd like grade report: 0% the silliness of it all makes me smile beyond the window i'm facing the skyscrapers are slick with the morning's rain a gull sails around N Rush St flags of five different sports teams flap cheekily back at me and everything is slower in this city to a girl from the Big Apple i can't take my mistakes seriously so what if i flunk out of this class flunk out of this school flunk out of these dreams scribbled all over the margins of my notebooks so what try me, honey
you wanna take a bite out of me bare some teeth no one here to chew for you can't just roll down your window and honk for momma bird to feed me—no me— me me me me if you want fast food, find a drive-thru hope you like your meals burnt and your heart diseased you'll pay for gourmet if you want quality so, start making bank and, no, your father's exec job don't count build an apple orchard and feed the hungry people climb the ladder all the way to the top rung to toss fruit down to kids standing under eyes wide as frisbees so until then, check your appetite, know that i will kat call you right back i will woman spread you back into your seat so fresh that even my corpse will still breathe so try me, honey can't promise you won't break your teeth |
Kat TanHeartbroken & hungry poet. Feed at your own risk. ArchivesCategories |