the blank expression.
sometimes, (at night in daylight after lunch before dinner during the crash) i get tired of being a girl or a woman or whatever it is i am or am expected to be, and i do dream about taking it off, lightly, delicately, like heavy armor with soft bits stuck inside. to be reed thin invisible freer even.
like the anne sexton poem. the famous one, everyone knows. i could show it anyway and will.
Consorting With Angels
Anne Sexton
I was tired of being a woman,
tired of the spoons and the pots,
tired of my mouth and my breasts,
tired of the cosmetics and the silks.
There were still men who sat at my table,
circled around the bowl I offered up.
The bowl was filled with purple grapes
and the flies hovered in for the scent
and even my father came with his white bone.
But I was tired of the gender of things.
Last night I had a dream
and I said to it...
"You are the answer.
You will outlive my husband and my father."
In that dream there was a city made of chains
where Joan was put to death in man's clothes
and the nature of the angels went unexplained,
no two made in the same species,
one with a nose, one with an ear in its hand,
one chewing a star and recording its orbit,
each one like a poem obeying itself,
performing God's functions,
a people apart.
"You are the answer,"
I said, and entered,
lying down on the gates of the city.
Then the chains were fastened around me
and I lost my common gender and my final aspect.
Adam was on the left of me
and Eve was on the right of me,
both thoroughly inconsistent with the world of reason.
We wove our arms together
and rode under the sun.
I was not a woman anymore,
not one thing or the other.
O daughters of Jerusalem,
the king has brought me into his chamber.
I am black and I am beautiful.
I've been opened and undressed.
I have no arms or legs.
I'm all one skin like a fish.
I'm no more a woman
than Christ was a man.
and it isn't as simple as declaration or sweeping demands. it isn't as simple as saying, "i'm taking a break." it's always there. trapped inside, a part. trying to scrub it out or run away from it proves futile, as if it were inside the bone and this is trying to strip to marrow. it isn't so possible. it actually is a part of whatever the soul is or became. and i am sad, and i imagine orphans with their mouths to feed and sooty noses and bleak brick background. just silent faceless expression. like there's nothing else to say, but this isn't much either. just stale bread crumbs, scratchy pocket linings against thumb. sad; fettered and corduroy. to know a part of you in a finality, also knowing you must be solemn about it, now. and it's hard not to cry but it fits into place. you start doing the meaningless adult things, the lack of expression, on your own. the emptiness that ability it was in you after all. that one tiny corner so gnawing and important, and silent and ignored, maybe i don't have hope for anymore, nor for fluidity, nor for possibility. maybe i believe, maybe inside it really is. and there's nothing i can really do about it. maybe i've gotten to that point.
like the anne sexton poem. the famous one, everyone knows. i could show it anyway and will.
Consorting With Angels
Anne Sexton
I was tired of being a woman,
tired of the spoons and the pots,
tired of my mouth and my breasts,
tired of the cosmetics and the silks.
There were still men who sat at my table,
circled around the bowl I offered up.
The bowl was filled with purple grapes
and the flies hovered in for the scent
and even my father came with his white bone.
But I was tired of the gender of things.
Last night I had a dream
and I said to it...
"You are the answer.
You will outlive my husband and my father."
In that dream there was a city made of chains
where Joan was put to death in man's clothes
and the nature of the angels went unexplained,
no two made in the same species,
one with a nose, one with an ear in its hand,
one chewing a star and recording its orbit,
each one like a poem obeying itself,
performing God's functions,
a people apart.
"You are the answer,"
I said, and entered,
lying down on the gates of the city.
Then the chains were fastened around me
and I lost my common gender and my final aspect.
Adam was on the left of me
and Eve was on the right of me,
both thoroughly inconsistent with the world of reason.
We wove our arms together
and rode under the sun.
I was not a woman anymore,
not one thing or the other.
O daughters of Jerusalem,
the king has brought me into his chamber.
I am black and I am beautiful.
I've been opened and undressed.
I have no arms or legs.
I'm all one skin like a fish.
I'm no more a woman
than Christ was a man.
and it isn't as simple as declaration or sweeping demands. it isn't as simple as saying, "i'm taking a break." it's always there. trapped inside, a part. trying to scrub it out or run away from it proves futile, as if it were inside the bone and this is trying to strip to marrow. it isn't so possible. it actually is a part of whatever the soul is or became. and i am sad, and i imagine orphans with their mouths to feed and sooty noses and bleak brick background. just silent faceless expression. like there's nothing else to say, but this isn't much either. just stale bread crumbs, scratchy pocket linings against thumb. sad; fettered and corduroy. to know a part of you in a finality, also knowing you must be solemn about it, now. and it's hard not to cry but it fits into place. you start doing the meaningless adult things, the lack of expression, on your own. the emptiness that ability it was in you after all. that one tiny corner so gnawing and important, and silent and ignored, maybe i don't have hope for anymore, nor for fluidity, nor for possibility. maybe i believe, maybe inside it really is. and there's nothing i can really do about it. maybe i've gotten to that point.