class thirteen

absent

this is what the world would feel like
if you had gone away.

the seats are still filled
cool stone statues
faces eroded from storms
that have passed
through here
before
immobile, surreal,
strangers.

you'd still be the only one
i'd want to know

their faces,
locked in attention
mindless pupils regurgitating
undigested knowledge
spewing from holes without lips
eyes without seeing,
blind.

your eyes would have wandered
searching for all those others don't think
to look for

seeing the world through windows
and placing yourself in realms of rhythm
feeling the pulse of the room, of those next to you
finding a gaze that meets yours and locking eyes
exploring the line where she ends
and you begin again
dancing like a dervish, whirling around the thought
that there is you, and there is more
all while you sit,
motionless

it's inconceivable to them,
their infertile, barren wombs,
lifeless.

you're elsewhere now
i wonder if you think of me

class twelve

sunrise

my infatuated
exuberance has not lessened
since the moment
i first saw you

first love and most admired
seductive as a pin-up poster boy
dangling from my wall
muscles bulging and face clenched

but soft,
i'm caressing your glossy hair
hands dancing over the countours
of your face, counting
eyelashes and freckles
i'll know you then

when i look at you
i feel like water
stretching slowly over a rim, each
molecule holding, each
grip loosening
until the moment
when

snap!

and all is spilling:
perpetual gush

they say that nobody's perfect
but seeing you at dawn is
seeing the world
spinning
in your presence

you're holding planets
in your fingertips
and the morning sings out
in exaltation--
to you,
beloved.

class eleven

sight, space

i see myself when i look into
your eyes
reflecting the glaring world
encapsulated by me in
the tiny globe of your vision

i am often
smiling and yet
distorted: my nose much larger
than i hope it is in the world
outside of you

the lens of your sight
slightly skewed,
glasses since you were a boy
and yet seeing
more than those who have looked
at me before.

those eyes are sometimes
the only thing i can remember
of you, though i see you often
somehow they have become
abstracted from even your face
and hurled into the realm of
essence:
there becomes you, solid
standing in space
vacuumed and hurtling through blackness
meteors of consciousness
asteroids of love
i need to see myself there
reflected in your gaze--
more depth
than surface

only when i see past myself
can i see you,
and the tiny
distortion
starting back

class ten

skirts

i cannot say
what a woman is
but i know that
i am more
than my skirt.

as a child
i danced in a ballet class
my pink tutu bouncing about
stiff lace, strutting like a peacock
seducing his prospective mate
heedless of other, i moved
esteem not a concept yet developed
i simply wanted to dance

moving forward
i found myself apart
from the feminine:
other girls playing dress-up
and me climbing trees
i was more of a monkey
than a girl then
primal in social standings
grunting responses, knuckles grating ground
i'd holler if i found a field absent
skirts were not made for running, climbing
my body is my own and i will
not! be limited

still, this pull of freedom
chained only by my
little tow, the last inch of
imprisonment that ties me
the string of adulthood steadily
growing, each fiber expanding
gaining one more and one more
ribbon wrapping into a crisscross around
my foot and up toward my ankle
every pain necessitated by
the life i have not yet chosen
to leave behind: all melding itself
into the scars of weight and burden

i ran from skirts once
because they felt too open
and still too much of a thought
now, i find in them
the ability to embrace that i have
experienced what it feels to run
and to come back
and to fly
and to land
and to breathe
and to let go
and to stop
and to start again