FREED VERSE

why is it so hard to write about you?
you, who i've known all my life, but still

have yet to meet. maybe 'know of' is  
a better term for what we have. 

my friends know you by your first name, the one 
that makes them chuckle and be grateful 

their parents are still together. 
i want to write pages for you 

and all the times we never had. i want to drain 
the ink of a thousand pens and sketch 

a new womb from their overlapping letters.
letters about boudoir shoots and boyfriends

i never told you about. how i took the nails 
out from my window and sipped captain morgan's 

while you were gone at the gym. the coconut
rum was sweeter than i thought it would be.

i didn't need the sugar. 

on the phone that night with brandon,
i told him i was in love with manuel 

and he called me a bitch for being afraid to take a sip.
it was the first time i said i loved him. maybe 

i was convinced i was drunk. you thought his dad was 
quite the catch, so i didn't have to cover that one up. instead 

i got his hands dirty and he got me dirty. we 
never got clean. but i still want to write 

elegy on elegy about the c-section scars you never let me forget
and dad's drunken nights i never gave you the chance to remember. 

i want to write about your 9.5 shoe size and obsession 
with wedges-the sandal and the salad-as well as

the prescription glasses i needed that made me such a money pit. 
i want, and i want, and i need, and i swear! i swear i do! 

but i can't say a thing, because my lips pucker 
at the thought of all the hospital visits you've made me

and the fear that what lies beneath our surface-level conversations
is a bone-dry reef. bleached by your exhaustion 

and the illness only i will be able to cure myself of, 
no matter how bad you wish you could save me. bleached

by this stingy pen who won't give up its ink. 
i cannot get myself to bring it to the page.

because for every night home alone with food 
you only bought me because you hated it enough 

for it not to be a temptation, there is also
a read-aloud phonics lesson, sticky-fingered game 

of indian rope burn, and trip to LA you didn't have to take.
this is why i cannot write about you, no matter how tight

the tension is between needing my freedom 
and wanting you wrapped around me 

like when i was a child scared of 
Mr. Calvin's halloween decorations. 

you told me to face my fears, but now my life is scarier
than it's ever been, and all i can think about is not writing about you.