Tangled {a poem}

Trickle of sweat between breasts
down the insides of thighs
underarms, lower back -- I wake
this way every single morning,
tangled in soaked sheets and you.

This, the same body I lived in-
side of when a boy, Maceo,
pointed out my pert nipples
during gym class, when I showered
at camp and stole glimpses
at the older girls -- the way
their bellies rose ever so
slightly between hip bones.

I thought I was comparing
all that time. I thought I wanted
their bodies, but not like that --
I thought, if only I looked like
that, like her or her or her.
In fact, I did want their bodies
tangled around mine, lying
around someone's bedroom
listening to Joni Mitchell
or Phoebe Snow or Bob Dylan.

If I could go back and disentangle­
the messages I received then,
the ones that made queer weird
and gay something not even
on the radar, if I could go
and tell my gorgeous young self
something, it would go
like this: Eat the food, kiss the girl.
Fill up on pleasure and meat
and skip a class or two and
you don't have to be the cold,
quiet moon.

Anyway. I don't go back, I don't
say these things. I don't tangle up
with how things were because
there is no rewriting history, only
learning from it -- or so they say.
They say a lot of things. Maybe
that was the problem --
their voices so loud in my head
that I could not listen
to my own poetry unless
I was all the way alone,
and solitude swallowed me like
a snake eats its own tail,
like a story the digs its own
burial plot.

And so I rise now,
sweaty, hair tangled, legs tangled
with a woman who knows me
from the inside out.
I rise and step into the shower
and run my hands over where
my belly rises now between hip bones,
breasts round, skin soft
from the wear of years,
no longer comparing myself
to who I wasn't but coming,
little by little, finally after all these
tangled years, all the way
into this being.

It's uncomfortable
and downright squirmy sometimes --
old angry voices from the past
don't like being tossed
to the wolves. But I do
just that, make an offering
of what once ruled my life,
all of the demands, the vicious
not-enoughness that plagued
me into chronic restlessness.
I watch as they tear into
the tangle of sinew and bone
and artery, standing back
and seeing what will become
of all that I am no longer am.

{May 17, 2017}