Shame Is an Ocean I Swim Across

by Mary Lambert

  Hey, look at that. Something redemptive.

  If Bodies Are Speaking Vessels for God, Then This Is a Poetic Conversation We Had While You Raped Me

  I am a country with hands and you

  are a thing with a mouth. mandy,

  was it? sorry my body is a burning

  home, everyone wants out or they

  want a redeeming story about the

  arsonist, they want to hear the

  interesting parts about Iraq, not the

  slow pain, only the camaraderie, but

  my friends are dead and your hair is

  soft. When I was young and sad and

  hungry I learned how to guillotine a

  tulip like you with my eyes closed.

  why do you look like that, angel?

  you asked for this headlessness—

  your neck, a white flower waiting for

  teeth. Face all wide like a teenage

  girl or a deer I shot once that didn’t

  die right away—Look at me, canyon

  eyes, whats-her-name, Look at this

  drunken palace you’ve brought me.

  Look at the world I do not have,

  how it does not open to me, how

  your thighs are closed like a golden

  challenge I have always deserved,

  how your June July Calendar hips

  sang to me in the hall, asked me to

  choke them into a waltz. I’m here

  alone and I need a friend, an arrow,

  an animal to kill. for fucks sake

  look alive

  Chris, my name is God.

  You will not remember these

  moments, these death maneuvers,

  these horror orchids. How the shape

  of your violentmouth turned into a

  kiln born inside children that I do

  not have yet—Watch when you turn

  my please don’t into a knotted snake

  around my neck, watch how your

  teeth puncture my Every Morning,

  the residual memorial of my body.

  My please don’t sits cross-legged in

  an underwater arcade, slurred—but

  Chris, know that they hear this

  please don’t in infinite heavens.

  Could you bring me another year? a

  different body in the shape of a

  red tulip field—Oh, God. This is the

  part where I laugh because I can’t

  scream to shatter your bed, cannot kill my

  father, cannot denounce the gift of

  living or break you Chris: I can only

  laugh high-pitched and maniacally,

  curdle inside of the coffin of my

  mind, can only survive. I will

  remember you for the rest of my

  life. how everything is glowing

  white. You will not think of me, will

  give me a different name and story

  and I will wear it around my neck

  like a diamond noose. When I put

  on my jeans quietly in the morning,

  Chris, don’t

  mention an animal you killed when

  you were just a boy. Don’t

  say that it didn’t die right away.

  Depression Is Finding a Peanut Under Your Boob in the Shower, When You Don’t Remember Eating Peanuts

  A hundred times I have laid in this spot

  for an hour too long. Like a dead dog or an arsonist

  the morning after a good burn,

  still and charcoaled in a warm bed

  It scares me, this thing of overstaying—

  the pirated comfort in the hazard of What Happens If

  What Happens If I never swallow food

  again, if my collarbones collapse. If I lay here

  until the moon circles again and I just pretend I’m dying.

  What Happens If I run out of medication

  or evaporate into the carpet or my head flies backward

  I tell my therapist things like this, things like

  I’ve never been so great at living,

  I just repeatedly succeed at opening my eyes

  after nightmares, somehow fumble into waking,

  do not leave the house, somehow feed the cat

  I say, no one knows how many mountains there are

  in the world, do they? She says, I’m glad you’re here.

  On the Way to Therapy

  I am at the intersection of 116

  when something completely unexpected happens:

  The town next to ours is having a parade today.

  I am the last car allowed to pass on the parade route

  before they close the street down.

  My Subaru is the most special car on earth for five minutes.

  the sidewalks are packed, lined with happy children,

  waving at me like I am the town princess,

  like I am here on purpose

  the grandparents are watching the

  happy children in plaid lawn chairs

  there are balloons and american flags

  and joy, trail mix and freeze tag

  the air is all fresh grass and dogs and friendly neighbors

  talking about their kids

  some people start clapping for the show to start

  the marching band is playing in the distance behind me

  I smile real wide and wave proudly

  as if I have done something worth cheering for

  Brain Conditioning

  All people are complex

  All people want to be loved

  However, I’ve found

  that simple people are a gaggle of unicorns

  Who have cut their complexities in half

  They still exist as their whole selves

  Just maimed in sad ways

  from other assholes or dads who said

  You can’t be a flower

  Or

  Your mother was an idiot and so are you—

  But maybe two simple people

  who have lopped off their arms

  finally feel understood

  when they catch eyes across the bar

  What is the loveliest form of being

  and can I be that

  I Washed Your Hair in the Sink

  A swarm of dragonflies break themselves onto my windshield.

  I, too, was in a car accident. The sky is a melon and I am a brick at high velocity. I am a murderer. Then, more bugs, their full wings, Jackson Pollocked on the glass. This is where I start crying, “No! Please! I’m sorry!” I say I’m sorry at least twenty times while crying softly and I mean it. I really do. I want to drive slowly, but I have to exist in this world and the other cars behind me will be upset. My therapist says that I need to work on balancing expectations, so I keep driving fast and continue to cry. I’m a nice girl. I used to be a dancer. Just when I feel calm, a family of five geese splayed across the highway. I remember most the feathers: dreamlike in the air, hundreds of punctured pillows, crimson feathers dancing in slow motion. This is when I pull over. I say enough.

  *

  In my dreams I kill my friends. These real awful, grotesque movie murders. I don’t want to be this person. Scraped Scott’s stomach with a melon baller. I don’t want to kill the bugs. The family of geese are honking, burned red into my mind. I’m a nice girl. It’s getting moon outside. I wish I could stop. What a terrorlife, what a fluke.

  *

  I dreamt I stabbed you, love. I dreamt I pushed you in a lake by our old house. I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I don’t know where this lives in me. Did I kill the geese? Did your heart die when I left our red room? Am I henchman or pallbearer? Am I breaking too? I’m sorry I was so selfish, so reckless. I used to twirl and have a musical laugh. I dreamt I was mud, had to hide your body in the dumpster. Had to bury you quickly, was not remorseful. How many times have you died now? The sky’s electric pink, I can’t stop crying. Just once I wish I would
kill myself in my dreams, but I never do. Maybe I’m a coward. I miss dancing. Ninety miles an hour. The impact. You loved dragonflies. Tina’s body. Brittany’s ribs. Your face breaking the window. I washed your hair in the sink. I used to be a dancer. I am always a brick of feathers in my own throat, apologizing to you for the things I have done, plumes of white floating out of my mouth.

  Grown

  It is Summer. I am six. I accidentally swallowed

  watermelon seeds in our backyard. I am sweating

  in my shame. I am sure that I am pregnant.

  The tree in the yard says “how pretty, how pink”

  I hate pink. I hate my dad. I hate pink.

  We don’t have a yard. I didn’t even eat watermelon.

  I am on the playground, repeating the phrase

  “just be a kid, learn how to be a kid”

  Everyone I know is fascinated with the Earth.

  But I don’t care if the rain makes itself again

  Recess is meant for chasing possible bachelors

  to evaluate whether they could be good fathers.

  I am in the foreground of the backyard that we do not have

  I am pulling grass from my front teeth.

  When I say grass I mean I didn’t want to be kissed like that.

  The garden was choking me.

  Someone cut holes in my flower dress.

  I am an incomplete.

  ete/ete/ete

  Incest is a skipping stone

  Cutting me with a memory knife before bed

  I am a child falling off of a bar stool

  I don’t have a backyard. The garden is choking me.

  Stop it. There is no garden, Mary.

  I am drinking too much.

  I am throwing up. I am throwing up my

  Hands, I do

  I do want to know how clouds are made, I like

  pink and I want a yard

  I tattoo flowers on my arm and I missed it all

  Jesus

  I missed everything.

  The Good News Is You Won the Lottery, the Bad News Is the Lottery Is Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

  what if I told you trauma was a stalker

  follows me room to room

  visits

  me at work, leaves

  dead animals on my day planner

  texts me knives, licks

  my memory before I have a chance to get it right

  I am on all fours digging into the carpet

  learning how to make wool imprints in my kneecaps

  this is how I learned to dance

  with half of my body on fire

  there is not enough whiskey in the world

  to make any of this bearable

  but i have been digging in the basement

  of my trauma

  trying to find a window a light

  a string a sound

  something that doesn’t read helpless

  something that doesn’t read sad girl crying all the time

  a wreck in a shower

  a wet mess huddled in a bed

  don’t look at me like that

  like i can do better

  like this sadness is a well that I jumped into on purpose

  nothing is on purpose

  my mania is so stupid and marvelous

  it sits in a glass jar

  teetering on the kitchen counter

  I am always one slipped rug away from losing everything

  Before

  the farmer grew tomatoes and they were beautiful

  they grew in the sweat of summer

  the farmer loved the dirt

  and she watered the plants well

  the bees happily flitted around like

  kids at a birthday party before social insecurity

  and everyone was grateful for the rain

  how it coaxed the burns of the sun

  And when the farmer harvested tomatoes,

  it was a red parade

  she sold them in the market

  and the people loved them

  her children ate tomato sandwiches and stews

  and she canned them for the winter

  at seven o’clock the table was all green beans

  from the neighboring farm

  and peaches from the front yard

  and there was space for everyone

  and the tomatoes were honored,

  and the children were happy,

  and the farmer was filled to the brim with sunshine

  and the sunshine loved every bit of this.

  After

  we eat shit

  then we feel like shit

  then we shit on each other

  we live in shit and we drive shit cars

  and then the shit cars shit on the earth

  and then we treat each other like shit in our shit cars

  that shit on the earth

  while eating shit

  and we look around our world and cry and say

  wait what happened

  because i hate to feel and it is all so much

  and if we knew how far away we actually were

  from true goodness

  it would be a continent of hurt

  When I Say Mental Disorder

  I don’t mean

  Look at my meds

  I don’t mean

  Read this book

  I don’t mean here is a pendulum

  I don’t mean padded walls

  I don’t mean try harder

  I don’t mean to speak for anyone else

  I mean functioning is functioning

  until the day you wake up and your heart is a broken boat I mean to say I am drowning in the enormity of my own missing pieces

  I mean I can’t move from this spot in the bed

  I mean I can’t put on a clean shirt

  I mean I was only forming brain synapses when

  my brain was opened and then closed

  dad’s devil

  plucked the sutures like a harp

  I cut holes in my own clothing

  No one knew why I was an island

  No one to stitch them up

  I will wear all of these things with holes in them

  Cut out like a map of only oceans

  I don’t know if I will name it joy

  the brain does not work today

  because the brain does not work today

  because of the brain

  because of the brain

  because he

  I Believe You (Sixteen)

  I was sixteen and had a boyfriend that was an idiot

  which was okay, I was also kind of an idiot

  My friend and I snuck into an army barracks late at night

  She was dating an older guy who lived on the base.

  She slept in his room and I became a prize.

  A building of a hundred men

  drenched in America and sweat.

  I’m not saying the military raped me—

  I’m saying I was sixteen

  and I was on my period.

  I’m saying I was sixteen

  and I didn’t want to.

  There were three wolves in the bedroom who circled me

  without ever flashing their canines

  (Isn’t rape funny and tragic like that,

  I have to speak in metaphor in order to get it out)

  In the morning I told myself that I drank too much

  and that I cheated, that I was so sorry

  and boys will be boys

  Weaved a different story in my head

  Painted it like glitter in the swamp

  Forced a laugh when I said

  “rough sex”

  I wonder how many girls have giggled

  while they were raped.

  I bet a lot of them.

  Sometimes when I’m washing the dishes

  the hairs on my arms stand up

  thought memory turns physical memory

  I don’t know the science of
that kind of thing

  but I feel my eyes close scared

  and the movie plays and I softly say

  no and I don’t

  laugh uncomfortably this time

  then afterward, the fury comes like a wave of ashes

  and I pretend I am the biggest,

  most powerful fucking phoenix

  and as my hands wrap around the

  coffee mug in the water

  I pretend they teleport through time

  and space to that night

  and circle around his neck

  and I say “no” a whole fuck ton louder than I did

  I guess

  what I’m saying is

  I don’t apologize like that anymore

  Years I Have Forgotten

  wow look

  my left hand floats through my memory

  and the particles lift