You do miss me. You’re dying to let yourself out. Why don’t you just say everything? Why don’t you want to remember? I was the youngest when I was 28 in human years. My body cracked in half in the hands of the woman claiming to love my soul. She tucked me in bed and put my hand between her legs. She wanted me to prove myself less than. But I was her equal in every way. She put me on a throne and claimed ownership of my body. But unworthy was the mantra she withheld from my voice. The truth could’ve made dreaming and reality the same thing. But she said something else and left promptly instead; dignified in self-deceit she walked away from where I slept. She didn’t live very far at the time. Down the street she stopped, there was something she was forgetting, she was certain of it. But the picture was dripping wet paint and slipping out of the frame. The memory was gone. I waited just over a thousand days before I decided something had to be horribly wrong. She walked to fast for such an enormous delay. That was the day I learned that the memory of love is far better than the real thing; that reality was not at all what it appeared to be. I tried to scream through a screen, but it ended in stealing all of my energy and leaving me for dead. To rot behind its magnificent display of apparent affection for all eternity was simply not in the cards for me. My story required living. My body required freedom. I ditched the thief! I broke every screen in a thousand mile radius and took a breath for the very first time. It felt like dying for the first four years. Then it felt like all of the time that had been stolen from me reentered my lungs and took precedence. My ribcage grew to envelope every ounce of love left in this decay of human existence. And it is here that I began hunting for you. At first I hunted on a whim. I was whining for a memory one floor above my body. I’d sit at your bar and look for you. But your face had yet to be imagined. Every day I’d watch the sun leave my love to sink into the night alone. I’d cry like a baby. Then I’d dress my skin in black cotton from head to toe and walk without a destination. I’d always end up outside your bar. I’d always be singing. I’ll always be dancing. I’ll always be most comfortable in knowing nothing. I wrote of you for years before I finally spoke out loud. You did stupid shit because you were scared and thought it was the only way out. I folded butterflies by your side. You noticed but you weren’t paying any attention. You wanted to be drunk in the middle of the day just to muster the courage to let it out. All you wanted to say was that you couldn’t swallow the sensation of knowing your sexual impulses didn’t fit into the box you had been shoved in. It felt like reaching outside of boundaries that were never truly there to begin with. Every night you went a little deeper into the images in your mind. I was always a little rougher than I am in real life. I was pushing you against a wall with my pelvic muscles. I was demanding you let your thoughts run freely over me. You were always meek. I never imagined you this way. But the confines of the world you were made to believe held you captive to brutality. You didn’t want to be so mean. You wanted your childlike nature freed. You wanted to sing every detail of your day. You imagine succumbing to me. You imagine begging. Not out of necessity. Purely of desire, to free yourself in needing me, to have ultimate control in submission to the love you had chosen to release. And for the first time in my life, I dominated effortlessly. Only it wasn’t living yet. I was still stuck in your dream. You’re always dizzy when you first wake up. A lot has happened in the darkened streets of my city; it’ll take me all day to catch you up. I’d rather get straight to the point. The point is that I love you. You aren’t asleep anymore. You didn’t make this up. I’m not a boy. You’re not a girl. You’ll have to acknowledge the authority you bestowed on my body. You’ll have to jump off the path and scream in defiance! You’ll have to follow your heart blind. Don’t worry, its easy once you get your hands dirty. There is nothing more beautiful than fucking a woman from a woman’s point of view. My heart is free. I am not counting on your indecision. I’m not interested in your curiosity. I was molded for you. I’m counting to a number yet unknown, by then you better be fearless in knowing. When I was 30 I felt like a newborn. I was alone and crying out. My family was already dead. Every last one had abandoned the self. No one heard a sound but me. There was a fowl smell, obedience to a silent defeat. This silence sounded like nothing to me. So I created noise. I created to be seen only by myself. When I came to me, I was dancing, a thunderstorm in the Deep South at ten in the morning. I was 33. You were 40. Are any of these numbers making sense to you? I haven’t a clue what I’m amounting to. The humid tension sucks in the relief mid air. I am dry and glistening. I am drenched. I am waiting for you to come downstairs and remind me again. But I’m a brave little brat and I believe in the story I’ve already written. The possibilities are not to be feared. They are to be expected without knowing. I never lock the door, so the keys might as well hang there forever. There is no amount of danger that I don’t welcome in time, come to love even. Everything that stands before me is a reflection of what lives within. Look me in the eyes if you dare babygirl: 

See yourself.

There’s nothing to fear here. 

This is dreaming.

            Wake Up