a poem

                         "finally, in its entirety 

LETTER FROM MY HEART TO MY BRAIN 

Its okay to hang upside-down like a bat,
to swim into the deep end of silence,
to swallow every key so you can’t get out.
It’s okay to hear the ocean calling your fevered name

to say your sorrow is an opera of snakes,

to flirt with sharp and heartless things.

It’s okay to write, I deserve everything,

to bow down to this rotten thing

that understands you, to adore the red

and ugly queen of it, to admire

her calm and steady rowing.

It’s okay to lock yourself in the medicine cabinet,

to drink all the wine, to do what it takes to stay

without staying. Its okay to hate God today

to change his name to yours, to want to ruin all that ruined you.

It’s okay to feel like only a photograph of yourself,

to need a stranger to pull your hair and pin you down,

it’s okay to want your mother as you lie alone in bed.

It’s okay to brick to fuck to flame to church to crush to knife

to rock to rock to rock to rock to rock and rock.

It’s okay to wave good-bye to yourself in the mirror.

To write, I don’t want anything.

It’s okay to despise what you have inherited,

to feel dead in a city of pulses. It’s okay

to be the whale that never comes up for air,

to love best the taste of your own blood. 

LETTER FROM MY BRAIN TO MY HEART 

This house is dirty, but comfortable.

Behind each crooked door

waits the angry weather of a forgiveless child.

I cannot help but admire this horrible

power of mine, how each small thing

can become a death: the lost house key. A spoiled egg.

A howling dog. There is no prayer or pill for this.

It is a ruthless botany; I might as well

be buried in the yard. I have no one to blame.

Not the mother who sang to an empty cradle.

Not the Dog of Spite who bit my hand,

just this long-legged sorrow

who trails my every joy like a dark perfume.

You have my permission not to love me;

I am a cathedral of deadbolts

and I’d rather burn myself down

than change the locks."

- Rachel McKibbens, 2010