Girl Talk

Hey girl.
Listen up.
I'm writing you a love letter,
Not because I think you need reminding of who you are
Or what you need
-I lack the expertise to unravel that part of your being-
But because I have known too many people
Way too often,
Who've walked around as
Voids
Echoes
White noises
Without realizing.

I've lived too little
To know so many people;
Too many people who've been part of a hole.

Hey girl
Someone's been reading you all wrong.
They've taken out their pens and straightened you up against
The table and broken you up to their own design
Some cartography, some sculpting so that you become
Some stray concept of a globe.
Christopher Columbus
Looking for India,
Finding America.

Why would someone flatten someone
That holds fire and lava and life inside and skin it?
It is no longer about maps,
It is about meat.

Hey girl
Someone once told me
- maybe more than once-
Something that was intensely beautiful
Sunlight breaking apart into fingers
And reaching out for a brook
- Intangible comforting intangible.

I have known too many people
Way too often,
Who've walked around as
Voids
Echoes
White noises
And somehow the 'people'
Are always girls
Girls genetically mutated to talk

Talk, girl, talk.
Tell me about this line and that one and
How neither of them define you
Tell me about how your body was softened and smoothened
Never really stabilized
Tell me about that time the anger was a glacier bursting open
At the back of your mouth
But you 'needed' to hold it in
Tell me how you create winds of laughter
Because in recounting a 'history of abuse',
It's easier to begin with, 'ha ha, it's absurd'.

Hey, girl.
We have our history and geography all wrong.
When I saw the first calendars man ever made,
They were lines in the sand, set in stone,
Scratched out to keep track of monthly blood.

Women made the first calendars.
These calendars
were later adapted by prisoners to mark
Imprisonment.