This is a performance/spoken piece in response to Jordaan Mason’s Divorce Lawyers, I Shaved My Head; an album related to our breakup in the way-back-when. If you aren’t familiar with Jordaan’s work, I highly recommend you check it out.
I once dressed like a man for you to prove how wrong it was.
Those images now so stained with semen, so preserved,
I wonder bodies electricity static and who will turn the lights off
when we hide in bed so afraid of being seen for flesh?
Years later, have I ever told you how afraid I am of the horses?
I was one of those poor girls, wildly gendered and misunderstood;
so studied, so indecipherable; all inference in corybantic war.
Your wild eyes, your jism drying on my back, your passivity;
that quiet wild war held between bodies in fervent friction.
You could never know I was just a scared child.
You could never know I had never touched a horse before.
You could never know how those reserved, furious eyes could frighten me so.
An animal so animal, when stables are stocks and neckties are nooses.
What the Vivian sisters forgot was their own animal alliances:
the raven, the stars, ursus majora, the snake, one each her own.
My own were lost in the war, the foxes are buried below the earth
and the Morrigan fled with what was left of my agency.
All that is left are the horses, the horses and You that fascinated creature.
Isn’t it clear?
You’re no midwife!
At best, a reluctant husband, a tenant,
you held my hand when my hand needed holding
and I pushed and pushed and when I cried I cried heavy tears
so heavy, and so heavy I carried them with me
you tried to tug them out of me while I dreamed of dying
and when we showered after, i celebrated in that scalding firehose,
hoping that skin would slip from skin
and I could catch a glimpse of the animal underneath you.
I cut off all of my hair. It wasn’t so that you would love me again – I knew you loved me and I loved you and we would never be able to love each other again. All that time I loved you I was shearing off locks of tinder so we could find warmth in those cold places. And you documented. And you sang me songs, you sang, “She slipped out, I don’t know how” and I
feigned a smile because I was so in love with you that hurt didn’t matter.
It was so cold. I was so cold I was so alone. You sang songs about my my cock while a kilometer away I drank until I couldn’t stand up and considered castration. I wonder still if you know how close we came to death that ugly warring winter. I wonder if we ever took off our animal masks and looked each other in the eye even once. I wonder if we children knew what love looked like, that ghastly shape; I wonder if the war ended or if instead we simply took on new meaning.
Will it I love you. Will it the Vivian sisters stop singing for the stars.
This is all that I have in my hands; I want to forget who I am.
This is all that I have in my hands; I want to fuck and forget who I am.
This is all that I have in my hands; how do we get warm?
