How do you show what you are made of, what the sum of time composed? The width of your ass, the amount in your wallet? What to show? Make a list, crack the code you couldn't break in elementary during tag, during recess, after school. Pour out your spleen to every one you brush against and listen to yourself cram for the exam of being a person, being somebody, that matters. How can you show the work when you don't know the answer? Who grades it anyway? I never looked at anyone else's paper. Why need to show mine?

Oh, the relief of not being a man. For if I were, I would have to know rage. I have never known it. There is a stopping, a stopper built into me. My makeup. Is it my feminine? Is it my sex? I can say the word hate, but I don't know it. Hate is the heaviest word I know. The weight to carry with it, will bend you beyond the measure intended by uttering, conceiving. I have tried to hate before. It is not worth it. The hated never gets the benefit of your pain, your desired wrangling of despair. Men project the rage of anger/hatred outward by use of fists/guns/tanks/bombs. I have lived a life surrounded by guns. I could hate them. I could. I am relieved to not have one in my hands. I am bare armed and fearing the machines of war being built up all around me. And then I wonder who I am when I suddenly want to punch?

When a four year old asks "Who finds me if I'm kidnapped, if strangers take me," how can you possibly answer in any way that he could understand without scaring and scarring him? Not you. The police, sure. The FBI, they are the police for special bigger badder scarier crimes. He can't conceive of why he is asking. Why he could be taken. He knows of strangers. He has said hello to them. He knows never to go with them. He knows to scream and kick and fight and hit and scream and scream. But still he wants to know. But still he wants to know what they would do to you once they have you. But still he wants to know why they would want to take him, why him? Why is he still asking? But still he knows there is danger. But still your voice quivers as you try to answer in a way that might calm you both. It doesn't.

Some people wear scents. Some wear them as a shield, a warning of their approach, a lesson to take notice of them sooner. This is not a scense of their self, this is a cloak, a covering. They don't want you to know who they are, they want you to think of them in this particular way ; musky, fruity, clean, freshly picked from a garden or manlier than any other man. My mother wore a scent all through out my youth. It wasn't garish or over powerful, it was how she smelled. I have associated her with that fragrance nearly my whole life. She could take a shower, be clean from soap and still have it under her skin. I would lie on her chest while she talked on the phone, then taking her scent with me. It was in her hair, her closet, her purse and the car. It became part of her makeup. I could lie in bed and be nearly asleep only to wake up by her smell as she passed by in the hall. When I was 10 years old, she was taken hostage in a bank robbery. While I was waiting for her to be released from the vault, I was waiting for her with my hands pressed up against the glass door of the neighboring drugstore, my eyes shut. I wasn't looking for her, I was smelling for her. My memory is in my nose.

I am weepy, this bending Willow, weighted by circumstance and the chance of place. Placement. Where to be, where to put the feel of my self and the lack? I am bending ever downward so far the sky will only be seen again if I were to be on my back. If religion is nothing but geography and genetics is your destiny then the place mat on my kitchen table will hold my dish waiting to be filled, but my stomach cannot stomach anything I have to offer it. With a dry mouth and eyes that won't stop leaking all their secrets I long for a time when time was the promise and green was. Green was. For now I Weep. For now I am bent, and the shade I give my self will not last.

Where does the green of envy start its creep? The insecurity of place rocks us loose in our relation to all relationships and forces us to shake our fists at the sky when things crumble, as they do. Is all security illusion? Is chaos the rule? Is the secret that there is no secret? Wishing for the wish all vanity and ego, the gulp and grab of humanity. Who said happiness was attainable? Just a right. Right is just and written down, inked, penned and read aloud. So how is it gotten? Is it gotten? It is a flash while driving alone at night, the cold breeze forgets your death, all that ends. The frozen second of the long note. A strawberry. Laughter in a movie theater. Then silence, and waiting, craning to view any scene. Launching, perched to pounce on the slightest glimmer of gladness. Did you bring some for everyone? Is there enough happy to share?