Letter to Myself

You are still your mother's daughter.

You are always barking up the wrong tree.
Lodging lozenges down your throat; you don't even have a cough.
The tall boy with the hidden heart and half smiles
offers only limb by limb; he is not a tree for you to climb.

You've shelved your past in parades of white dusted
off addictions to love, lines, words, hearts, cats, homes;
don't build a home in anyone's hand; they will
throw out your toothbrush and clothes.

You will never finish that book you once picked up.
The ending was already written. You were never meant to know.
You will try and wear every dress shoe.
Nothing fits you. You are destiny's barefooted wanderer,

rummaging through garage sales for used parts of hearts,
lock and key in hand to the wrong latch-key boy
who grew but never for you.
You tie knots in your belly instead of your heart.

You say you remember your mother's freckles; no, it must be
that you remember her face
the bars behind her eyes,
jailed in with the wishes of un-wishing the past
jailed in with lust giving in,
losing love and
child who is never

just loved.

You find the pieces of her,
scaling your imagined mountains.
They are never taller than your
father,
your lovers.
And still,
you cannot climb them
cannot climb past
the marks left by the last traveler
resurfacing,
beached jellyfish stinging, string lacerations.
The current that runs through you is
a ring of engagements to self
a ring around the rosy,
the kind that plagues your black death heart.
You wait for a new start,
you always bend at the knees
heels in the starting blocks
waiting for the starter gun
to go off to find a bullet wound.

Bare and open,
skinned fruit
flesh sun-singed
too ripe for any touch.

No one will eat you; no one will have you.
In passing, they will graze their fingertips over
your fertile flesh,
lick their lips
and say, You would've been good long ago.