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Sinew-knotted hands cupping ample double-d’s dropping to the floor, she says: no one tells you how your body will change. Puffing up sternum to present barely-there-a’s protected under piles of foam and wire, ribcage dominant, I nod.  

Tucking damp tissue see-through with snot under the band of her long-stopped silver watch, she says: getting old, it takes courage! Watching her struggle up out of the faded green corduroy reading chair with the precious doily slip cover, her joints wired shut and held stiff, I nod, bending fluently at the waist to offer her an arm up.

You just can’t lose it like you used to, thirty-something belly jiggle laugh at mirror image, bicep shake a wave goodbye to ripened body and trim days gone past. Staring at soft belly and Jello thighs refracted in bathtub light, velocities interrupted by soap bubbles, I sigh in anticipation.

You’ll notice a change, once you’re healed and well, the surgeon says, wrinkle-soft hands running the raised length of scar. Swallowing hard, imagining unpredictable physical transformation, I nod.

But it’s not the sagging tits or sore connecting joints or relaxing skin or mending scar; it’s the way I get hungry or the way I feel hormones or the way I burp or the way I can’t predict the way I am that changes most. Outward: slow, a gradual gaining of lines and growing gray hairs. Inward: tumbling, an uncanny upheaval of surity and stirred sense of understanding.

They call this an adjustment period, like when you got your period for the first time and you thought: now I’m a woman. The adjustment period, what no one likes to say about the change, is that it never ends.  

xoxo,
M.L. H’art

Gretel Says.

The receiver smashed into plastic cradle, a resounding silence filling the space inside my ear where your voice sat only a moment ago, I say: “Please don’t.”

Ringing with the echo of all the things I left behind when I asked you to leave such a long time ago, my ears begin to burn: a red hot awkwardness crawling in through the canal, kicking at the drum, slipping down the tube into my throat until my tongue smacks of your tinny aftertaste. Trying to defend myself to walls staring blankly at me, I say: “It was nothing. It meant nothing.”

Stomping my feet, I am surprised by the protein-crack of eggshells, the same ones I tiptoed over when you raised your voice too loud. To compensate for all the noise, I whisper: “Shh, you don’t understand.”

Between the accusation and the unforgiveness, you didn’t leave much time for me to tell you: “I can explain!” Between the distrust and suspect, you didn’t leave much time for me to say: “I came back because I thought I loved you.”

Staring straight ahead, pinpoint eyes glazed with the familiar slick of liberally slathered guilt, I am leading down the same path where I’ve already dropped a line of homeward bound crumbs. “It’s all so familiar,” I muse.

But the me I met when I left you, the me you decided wasn’t for you, she’s kicking at my gut, raising her voice, punching my throat – quick jabs bringing out indistinguishable sounds: a groan, a growl, a bark.

The me I met when I left you, she’s holding a road map. On the map, there’s a clearly defined line. The line? It’s leading me in the opposite direction of you.

The me I met, she says: “This isn’t about you.”

xoxo,
M.L. H’art

Badly Drawn Eyeliner

Flipped ponytail, flippant remarks, she barges in the front door thickening the room with cheap body spray and naiveté. Drawing attention to badly drawn eyeliner, swiping a finger over mascara too thick for soppy eyelashes, the green shadow a stolen treasure from the bottom of her mother’s make up bag, she cracks gum and smiles bravely.

Inside, inside she’s nervous, her stomach marching lines of nausea up and down her esophagus, her thoughts a quickly confused jumble of would-haves, should-haves translated into laughter; laughter, trill and twisting – a sure sign of an inability to relegate feelings in a situation she’s not comfortable in.

The surface piercing in the exact same place as her friend’s, the mark of best friends forever – the mark they’ll both regret in four years when it’s pushed through soft skin and left a red, sore scar on a chest bone too embarrassing to reveal in low cut shirts.

Peroxide hair and grease-dark roots means she’s not slept at home in days and the cracked foundation collecting in the crevice below the piercing in her nose shows she’s not washed her face, either.

Filling dead air with puffy words, the occasional twenty-five cent vocabulary back flip proof she’s not nearly as vacant as the stereotype she perpetuates, the room is the confused energy of a confused little girl.

Sliding cell phone, giggling at sly text messages, “what?!” the insultingly effervescent reply to nearly every topic of conversation not held inside her phone.

I have to remember, I was her once; I have to remember, I’m not her now.

I smile kindly, look her in the eye, examine her discomfort, relish in my strong confidence, my clean hair, my defined standard of expectation of those considered friends. These markers of personality hang neatly around me – an aura of calm.

Her weak words and little looks of insecurity compliment my assuredness; a learned confidence is a gift worth being patient for.

xoxo

M.L. H’art

Conversations with Myself (Canto II)

before it all got lost up in the mess he said not all men are bad and i am not like your dad | i will hold you even though you’re slightly mad | i am not a man who will ever break you | we had pennies in our pockets | we had hope in our eyes | he said girl you’ve got a million different faces | so why’d you put on that disguise | well you can take what you want | cause i’ve got nothing |

Sliding the brush out of the tube – a careful twisting, a slow, sure extraction – I swipe eyelashes, staring myself down.

Blink, blink.

“I know better.”

Mirrored peptalk, blood red mouth pursed, shining pearls biting bottom lip.

“Why’d I spend so much time dressing up in disguise?” flipping clothes off the bed, pressing silky shirt against soft belly, bare breasts. The shirt tossed aside for another and another. The perfect outfit: confidence, actualized.

A bobby pin spread wide, feet pushed apart, legs open, hair snug and slipped in, forced tightly. Wet hairspray.

Spritz, spritz.

“There’s masochism in making the same mistake over. The hurt, expected – no different than past experience: the pain a little deeper, a little harder, a little faster.”

Wincing, a zipper pulled taught across skin, leaving marks on the flesh. Slipping toes into shoes one size too small, a firm fit. Pointed heel digging into carpet, pressing.

“That pain, it felt good.” Fingers fondling the clasp, choking beads around white skin, pulling tight, pinching. Just enough.

Looking in the mirror, slender hands fingering beads.

“No.” A little more, please. Choking beads pulled tighter, a breath escaping parted painted lips, a quick gasp.

“I’m just fine on my own,” smoothing shirt over skin, touching clad legs, pressing away worry, welcoming trouble.

One last look in the mirror, a small smile, eyes sparkling. A laugh, breathy.

“I’m just fine on my own.”

Slammed door, clicking heels. Confidence: self actualized.

xoxo

M.L. H’art