Shame Is an Ocean I Swim Across

by Mary Lambert

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  Table of Contents

  About the Author

  Copyright Page

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  ONE

  my body is terrifying,

  idaho is a giant shithole,

  and other wholesome stories

  How I Learned to Love

  When I was fifteen, I hated everything except for Weezer

  and maybe like two people. And cereal.

  One time a boy grabbed me in the music room

  and kissed my neck in front of everybody.

  I did not want to be kissed, but I thought I was supposed

  to want to be kissed. I did not know what to do.

  And so I laughed.

  I knew you were supposed to laugh after things like that

  The world had taught me to dress up my trauma

  in short skirts and secret bathroom crying,

  to protect the fragility of boys at all costs

  When I was five, my father molested me

  you become a strange human that way

  You cannot whip yourself awake as a child

  I should have been born a bird

  When I turned six,

  I stopped talking.

  When I was twenty-five and my name was on the radio,

  I asked people to write poems and send them to me

  Maybe because I was starved of honest humanity

  Half of the poems were about slit wrists

  I do not want to know any more

  about this brand of humanity.

  All I know of love is hunger.

  When I met you,

  I planted my heart into the heavy

  earth. I was scared,

  But you smiled back.

  Thank God I was not born a bird.

  Evelyn Is Made Up

  The little girl is a theater of shame and laughter.

  She is eating lunch in the library again,

  she tucks the desk into her ribs to feel smaller.

  The hurt is ricocheting from her mother’s thighs

  into the girl’s thighs. The mother’s hips are “too big”

  the mother says. The silver hope can of slimfast sits

  in the fridge, waits. The boys are cruel and

  predictable. The girl renames herself Evelyn.

  Evelyn does not cry at school, wears a ruby

  cardigan, is the star. Evelyn can run so fast, she has

  beautiful ribboned braids. She buys hot lunch

  effortlessly—not even reduced, she pays full price.

  Evelyn is made up. The girl knows this. Nothing is

  real since the incest. The girl can’t breathe through

  her nose because of the mold. The girl breathes

  loudly, it is a good joke for everyone.

  //

  I am hurting so much this winter.

  I am fucking everyone and nothing

  matters, I wore braids to an award show, I started

  wearing dark lipstick and crying in the shower

  My sheets are beautiful, I kiss everyone I meet

  The end of the world fits inside of my cocktail

  I never fixed myself, I am my own arduous endeavor

  I light myself on fire for everyone

  I am the arsonist and the lover

  All choked into one great sex bouquet

  And Evelyn is here inside me, she is magnificent

  and ordering room service like a pro

  my mother still makes me cry from her love

  & her sweet eyes & sugared compassion

  the only parts I remember of my childhood

  are lies I told myself to feel better

  Epidemic

  for Belltown

  The girl with purple hair is sitting at my bar again.

  I think she is beautiful.

  But not in a way that I want to have awesome sex with her but in a way that I want to drink chocolate martinis together and go shopping for christmas vests that have tinkly bells and even maybe polar bears with hats on them.

  She is having a full-body cry.

  I am the worst bartender, simply because I don’t know how to counsel people without crying back at them.

  She is crying about the state of women.

  I know that we come from the same rotting wood, so all I do is nod.

  Rape is not a man behind a bush with a knife, she laughs,

  It’s kissing you on the mouth like whiskey at a nice bar.

  The girl with purple hair and I are holding hands now

  I only wanted an apology. An acknowledgement of what occurred.

  Grappling as artists, as girls, as ships in bottles,

  how do we change any of it?

  I tell her I am going to write a poem.

  She says no one wants to hear a rape poem, mary

  Rape Poem

  Have you ever seen a stampede of horses?

  Do you wonder what the hooves

  look like from underneath?

  Have you tasted the blood from biting

  your own lips because you

  couldn’t say no loud enough?

  I never fought back. I didn’t punch him. I kept my

  thighs tight and closed, but once he’s inside you,

  you wish you were a streetlamp.

  A seat belt.

  A box of nails, of rust, something hard and ruined.

  You’ll wish you were a wild pony, a slick fish on a line,

  anything but a woman.

  Once he’s inside you, you just kind of give up

  and your eyes glaze over.

  They stay that way for years.

  Tips for Fat Girls

  you are the ugly best friend.

  you are the misguided, the chubby comical relief,

  you are the sweet girl with “inner beauty”

  and you will always be second best.

  the summer I turned nine, I gained fifty pounds.

  it was the first time I ate an entire box of oreo cookies

  the first time my reflection was foreign from weight

  the first time I cradled my stomach like a child,

  it was the first time I said, “mama. I hate my body.

  I want to slice off these parts right here.”

  but I know better now.

  I know girls like me have to grow a tough skin

  always be ready for rejection

  always be prepared to be left for the thin ones, yes

  they will always leave you for the thin ones

  be funny; laugh at yourself

  you cannot afford to be quiet and sad

  learn how to drink heavily

  learn how to hide your vulnerability

  become obsessed with your art

  always turn the light off before fucking

  always lay on your stomach

  always be on a diet

  always be generous

  and when they take away the most beautiful,

  sacred pieces of you that you have to offe
r, always smile

  (you might at least have a cute face)

  learn how to give head. be eager, be easy, be agreeable.

  call the shit covering your bones something creative,

  something like “curvy,” or “a little extra”

  stop calling them thunder thighs

  (it only feels like earthquakes when you walk)

  tell yourself that the aching will end,

  that the tugging at your shirt

  is because of the apron of your belly, hide it.

  hide your roundness at all costs.

  be molding clay.

  be an anchor.

  be dependable, be a model wearing heels.

  yell at the scale, call her the devil’s hooves

  stop taking baths.

  your body does not fit the way you want it to.

  the water does not cover your awful.

  throw up.

  split yourself into two halves, call one half Your Mother.

  tell her your diet is working, call the other half dove—no.

  call the other half “shut up and smile”

  call her Persephone, call her That Bitch

  don’t be a bitch! don’t be a fat bitch, be nice,

  be a work in progress, have an ego, be a Fierce Femme™!

  wear makeup as if you can’t stand to look at your own face

  because femininity is the only thing they’ve left you with

  you cannot afford to be without bronzer,

  without teeth that sparkle,

  hoopskirts, hair that curls, hair that “frames the face,”

  get tattoos, quote marilyn monroe,

  talk about renaissance painters,

  never let them know how lonely it is

  to have a body that is a joke,

  the punch line in comedies, the “before” picture

  never let them know you want to be something

  other than the ugly best friend.

  never let them know that the next person

  to reach their hands into your chest

  may look at you in awe,

  at how surprisingly breakable you are,

  how you have survived this long.

  Why I Slept with Makeup on for Five Years

  for kelsey lauch, amanda redwood, and angela tislow

  when i am sleeping,

  i want to be a movie girl.

  i want my hair to be cascading around my shoulders

  lips still bright & eyelashes deep

  want my monster to shine with a sephora glow

  want you to see the pretty parts of me, even

  angle my face to seem thinner in the dark

  i am afraid

  of my exposed naked, mostly my ugly—

  this is my body

  and i am terrified

  of the things it can & cannot do

  i wonder how many women

  are painting themselves into movie girls

  while they sleep

  angling their faces alien

  to themselves, an unnecessary surrender

  to things that kill them,

  to things that are not real

  I tell myself in the mirror,

  applying the second coat of mascara:

  these things are not real

  You Can’t Save Your Family

  for the chalk poems on capitol hill in 2010 and to anyone who read them

  melissa and i are newly twenty-one

  and drinking port in her apartment.

  something about bach playing on the balcony

  makes me feel older

  sitting next to her, pools

  of gray mascara shooting down her cheeks.

  we are talking about Sad Feelings

  she cares too much about people i think—

  girls like us are barbed wire,

  who’ve learned to tease without puncturing,

  pretending fire doesn’t burn calluses

  scaling the wick with our small hands

  because no one will hear you if you never tell them

  that you are being fucked without permission—

  fascinating how the tiny whimpers of a trespassed voice

  chameleons itself into a small phrase the next day

  the loaded chorus of: i am okay

  i am okay i am okay i am okay

  well

  I suppose

  everyone is okay, depending on what your

  calibration of pain is

  so you can remember that

  when he is high on heroin

  and you are detached

  and he moves into you without consent

  it could always be worse, right?

  oh my beautiful friend,

  you cannot save your family

  or the boy who is in your bed

  you can only save yourself

  summer is coming with the promise of friendship

  there will be wine on all the tables we sit at

  i will keep a record playing for you

  on the balcony of Denny and Summit

  remind you that you are the god of your own beginning

  if ever you falter or sink,

  i will find a room of mirrors

  it will be an endless room of gods, of you,

  of choosing to live on purpose

  I Will Fill a Tub with Iceberg Lettuce

  if i told you about the bathtubs i wish i owned

  just to kill myself artfully

  you’d probably say hey,

  this girl is fucking nuts.

  maybe just two—one for utility, for the nightmare thing

  and a second clawfoot to fill with iceberg lettuce—

  not soggy, sad lettuce but crisp and happy,

  glistening in the sheen of the light

  after i’ve drowned myself, you can

  put me on a bed of leaves

  and it won’t be figurative either!

  like actually put me on top of the lettuce

  like a christmas pig or roast beef

  let the vultures come to me, i just—i mean to say,

  gosh i still feel like dying these days

  the meds are pretty good about

  shutting up the choir of crazy

  but when you have an obsession

  with the glory of your own death

  they don’t tell you about the swarms of bees

  that race out of your mouth when you talk about

  your own incest i mean insects

  do you know there are stingers

  in your stomach lining waiting for you to speak

  just so they can nudge you?

  do you remember when the doctor put me on tranquilizers?

  they were so scared i was really going to kill myself

  i was sort of scared too and

  i was asleep all the time and i fell asleep in

  class and my teacher sent me to

  detention and the detention teacher told

  me i didn’t belong there and sent me to the nurse

  and i slept there and learned that

  you’ll eventually end up where you’re supposed to be

  whether it’s the nurse’s office or in college

  or in an office typing away

  thinking about the first time

  you saw a girl by a water fountain

  while i was in detention, i drew a bathtub

  that had huge leaves of iceberg

  lettuce sitting in it, and i thought i was being clever.

  i mean sure i haven’t

  sliced open my breasts with a rusty piece of glass

  for a couple years now

  but the important thing you should know is that

  i saved the piece of glass.

  It’s in a box in the garage

  and we have a lot of lettuce

  in the fridge.

  I Know Girls (Bodylove)

  for anyone who has ever felt their body is incorrect

  i know
girls who are trying to fit into the social norm

  like squeezing into last year’s prom dress

  i know girls who are low rise, mac eyeshadow,

  and binge drinking

  i know girls who wonder if they’re disaster

  and sexy enough to fit in

  i know girls who are playing russian roulette

  with death it’s never easy to accept

  that our bodies are fallible and flawed

  but when do we draw the line? when the knife hits the skin?

  because we’re so obsessed with death—

  some women just have more guts than others

  the funny thing is women like us will never shoot.

  we swallow pills,

  still wanting to be beautiful at the morgue.

  still proceeding to put on makeup

  still hoping the mortician finds us fuckable

  we might as well be buried with our shoes. and scarves.

  and handbags.

  we flirt with death every time we etch

  a new tally-mark into our skin

  i know how to split my wrists to reveal battlefields too,

  but the time has come for us to reclaim our bodies.

  Our bodies deserve more than to be

  war-torn and collateral, offering this

  fuckdom as a pathetic means to say:

  i only know how to exist when i’m wanted

  girls like us are hardly ever wanted, you know

  we’re used up. and sad. and drunk.

  and perpetually waiting by the phone for someone to pick up

  and say “you did good.”

  well, you did good.

  try this:

  take your hands over your bumpy lovebody naked

  and remember the first time you touched someone

  with the sole purpose of learning all of them,

  touched them because the light was pretty on them

  and the dust in the sunlight danced the way your heart did.

  touch yourself with a purpose,

  your body is the most beautiful royal