Nothing Is Okay

by Rachel Wiley

  The 3-year holding of breath

  Before they discovered her remains.

  She was still infinitely alive and everywhere.

  Could have been anywhere.

  Do you know this woman?

  Have you seen her before?

  Were you watching closely?

  She is an ordinary single woman

  The doors and windows all locked

  Normal locks

  The same as you and I have on our homes

  The same as I have on my home.

  You can check them yourselves.

  Did I mention she was alone?

  Did I mention I live alone?

  Will you check them yourselves?

  Will you check on me?

  Watch

  Closely.

  Please,

  Don’t let me disappear

  Too.

  SLEEPING GIANTS

  For Leo, For Myself, For Anyone who has ever been too big to be seen

  There are so many stories that demand the giant must be felled

  that the small are righteous and deserving of all they can

  take from the massive beast

  that all the golden things are up for grabs

  that the riches must’ve been ill-gotten to begin with

  You colossus

  You behemoth

  You titan

  You who can shoulder the very earth

  who are you to alter this narrative?

  They’re already looking for ways to discredit regular survivors

  You make it too easy

  Your body, its own defamation

  They’ll say you are too big to have been raped

  That victim is not a shirt that comes in your size

  They’ll laugh at the idea of you being overtaken

  say you are too much mountain for anyone to move

  They’ll say you have so much weight to place behind your No

  say one flick of your massive wrist would’ve brought

  the whole thing to a stop

  They’ll say that you must have wanted it

  That in fact, you are a monster of wanting

  your mammoth body laid out as evidence

  for the way it feasts so greedily on the space around it

  They’ll say you stand a lighthouse of untruth

  in search of attention

  a bitter leviathan,

  and anyone who toppled you earned that conquering,

  that they must be a knight, an Argonaut,

  a future king coming for your severed head

  Your truth sounds too much like thunder

  frightens the whole village

  frightens them into taking up torches and pitchforks

  a swarm to chase you to the edge of the cliff

  a mob come to tether you to the earth to pluck out your eyes

  for what they refuse to see

  They’d sooner pry open your mouth for the gold fillings

  than take your word

  that you were but a sleeping giant

  who was not awakened nor deemed worthy

  for something golden as consent.

  SPOILAGE

  Your sweetest love asks to borrow some silence

  & as if on cue all of the forgotten hurts, preserved

  in previous canning seasons,

  begin to erupt in the cellar.

  Every lidded mouth full & pickled with insecurity gives

  over to the swell of rancid things

  pushed into the dark for much too long,

  an exorcism of jarred ghosts,

  an oozing display of fireworks coating the walls in a

  layer of vinegary mistrust.

  As you apologize for the noise & promise to keep this

  messy doubt from sullying the peace you’ve promised

  them, an especially potent wound rockets thru the floorboards

  trailing a comet of sour molasses & lands

  on your patient love’s lap

  still whistling from the pressure.

  HOW TO EAT YOUR FEELINGS: ANXIETY (FROM BEING TRAPPED IN A DEAD-END DAY JOB AND NEVER FULFILLING YOUR POTENTIAL, PROVING ALL OF THE JERKS FROM HIGH SCHOOL RIGHT)

  You will need:

  -To have eaten M&Ms somewhat recently

  -Cleavage

  When you find the errant M&M in your cleavage (because there is always at least one) consider it as you would a cyanide capsule that could end all of your suffering, right now.

  Eat it.

  Slowly.

  Let the hard candy shell melt like so much

  hope in a windowless office.

  When it does not kill you—consider this your new lease on life. Take the rest of the day off work. Go to the park. Eat a gyro from a cart. Feel the wind in your hair and the sun on your face. Commune with nature (unless there are birds nearby. Fuck birds.)

  Pretend you never have to go back to work.

  Feeds:

  One Cubicle-Damaged Soul.

  SOLIDARITY WITH MISS COLOMBIA 2015

  (after the host of the 2015 Miss Universe competition, Steve Harvey, crowned Miss Colombia, Ariadna Gutiérrez, the winner in error)

  And they will talk about how gracefully she stood there

  while the crown was plucked from her head

  just as she felt the satisfying weight of it resting on her skull

  they will call her strong but she did not come here to be strong

  there are means to strength that are not heartbreak

  he said the universe was hers

  until he said it wasn’t.

  SETTLE

  So maybe one day I’ll just settle

  in a pastel senior citizens’ home

  my life reduced to what can fit onto a dresser top,

  a life raft.

  Some nice man and I will bond over the side effects of

  our blood pressure pills

  and then just settle in together like ribs after a deep sigh.

  He will absent-mindedly call me by his dead wife’s name.

  I will turn down my hearing aids.

  He will have the best hard candies in the whole joint.

  I will quietly hope to die first so as not to be left again.

  His children will politely hate me,

  bringing nice though impersonal gifts at Christmas.

  It’ll be fine.

  Just fine.

  THEY BOLT THE HEADBOARDS TO THE WALLS THESE DAYS

  Last night at a Days Inn next to a highway on-ramp

  in small-town Ohio we were “those people,”

  the howling inconsiderates of room 126 who made

  the travelers in the rooms on either side and above of us

  turn their televisions up,

  made the traveling businessmen uncomfortable

  in their double beds

  the trucker longs for someone warm

  the arguing couple pause and laugh and remember when they

  were “those people”

  and because none of them banged on the wall

  or complained to management

  I wish them the very best sleep of their lives tonight

  because I cannot and would not

  give them back last night.

  A RESPONSE TO THE MEN OF OKCUPID ADAMANT ABOUT SHOWING ME THEIR COCKS

  I.

  I do not wish to see your dick on cam

  Nor on Tinder or Instagram

  I could not would not on a phone

  Nor on an iPad, please leave me alone

  I do not wish to see your cocks

  Not in your hands, nor in a box

  I will not see it on a boat

  Or side-by-side with the TV remote

  I would not could not watch you jerk it online

  Not on YouTube, FetLife, or Vine

  Not on GChat, Tumblr, or Kik

  No, I do not wish to see your dick.

  II.

  A Working List of Places I WOULD Like
to See Your Dick:

  • Thrusting towards the spin of a rusty fan blade

  PARADISE

  I promise

  I have tried every method the body zealots insist

  will make me worthy

  the loathing

  the withholding

  the pain

  the castigation

  the flagellation

  the suppression

  the obey

  obey

  obey

  and still

  I am this feral landscape

  an orchard of gluttonous fruit trees

  and was cast from the paradise of my body by the shame gods

  banished from reveling in my own flourish

  rolling hills

  secret valleys

  the tree-trunk thighs

  heavy sugar-apple breasts

  I am sick for the springs I missed while exiled into my head

  as though a country separate from fleshy hips

  It cost me years of knowing my own clay

  and now that I have clawed my way back into this Eden

  I intend to bask

  O’, I intent to feast.

  ODE TO ALL THE MOTHERS I BORROWED

  There were years I spent wandering the west side of Columbus, a sharp-tongued girl in too much eyeliner and flannel shirts from the men’s section that were only outsized by my too-many, messy feelings

  Your children brought me to your doorsteps

  a found and muddy thing

  And you made space for me in your homes,

  at your tables, in your plans

  Me with swear words stuck between my teeth

  Me, feral and ready for a fight

  Me, chipped nail polish and crying in your bathrooms

  You,

  returning me to my own home as late as you could because

  you caught the confessions I draped in crass jokes

  You, seeing the unmothering in my fingernails

  chewed to the quick

  what a ghost town I would have been without you

  what a collection of unfocused photographs

  what a loss

  WAITING FOR THE END OF THE WORLD

  Every spring before I fell in love with you

  I inevitably found a dead robin at my feet.

  As robins mate for life I took this as some sad omen

  of another lonely year

  and when you did leave I was certain

  red-breasted birds would drop at my feet from the sky like blood

  sticky teeth from God’s own mouth.

  I read once that losing teeth in dreams is a subconscious

  fear of losing one’s beauty.

  It has been 2 years.

  So far the road is still not paved with crimson feathers.

  So far you are still gone.

  So far I am still beautiful.

  FOR FAT GIRLS WHO CONSIDERED STARVATION WHEN BULIMIA WASN’T ENOUGH

  Mom says that my teeth are perfect.

  Perfect brother has just gotten braces on his top four front teeth

  a tiny railroad bridge connecting nothing

  and mom says that my teeth are perfect.

  At last my quiet mouth, the overlook, the swallowed

  feelings have all paid off

  and cultured something perfect

  and mine.

  My mouth is a music box

  stuffed with pearls.

  Perfect brother is tall

  and lean

  eats whatever he wants.

  One time a whole box of oatmeal cream pies.

  But it is clearer each day that my baby fat

  is no longer baby fat

  but just fat.

  It is clearer each day that I will not be a ballerina.

  I had wanted to be a ballerina.

  My mouth is a music box.

  A small girl spins gracefully at the back of my throat

  on point.

  I am sure if I can just reach far enough back I could still

  have her grace.

  I reach for her every night after dinner while the bathtub fills.

  Until one day the health teacher shows us a photo

  of a mouth crammed full of broken, yellowed dishes

  says that a side effect of Bulimia

  is ruined teeth

  but Mom said that my teeth were perfect.

  And my perfect is a ransom I cannot bring myself to pay

  for the spinning girl

  so I swallow her

  and then nothing more for 4 whole days.

  My mouth is a music box,

  plays a low gear grinding that puts me to sleep.

  When I do not wake up any closer to the spinning girl

  encircled in pink tulle

  but rather still a ravenous hollow encircled in overgrowth

  I sneak down to the pantry and devour an entire box of

  oatmeal cream pies in the dark

  before going upstairs to brush my perfect teeth one at a time.

  THE LEAVING

  For Ben

  If I get to be old, my body a tower of carelessly stacked dishes in polyester slacks that somehow makes it from breakfast to dinner and to breakfast once again without celebrating a milk-glass confetti onto the ground, my hair a wild bouquet of television antennas, my eyes a pair of bashful blue brides hiding behind ivory veils, my skin a well-traveled and sinking hot air balloon

  If I begin to stand on the back porch and call in for dinner a cat that was found curled under the porch in a peaceful rest long before my teeth were pulled and replaced with ill-fitting typewriter keys that click and ding and must be slid back into place, I hope that my hermit-crab brain crawls up and into the memory of this thing between us that is love but not need

  I will call the mailman by your name and swoon over the gifts you bring me each day

  Every grocery list, a love letter scrawled to you until my hands fuse into conch shells I can only press to my ears to feel the hum of all of

  the kisses blown from and caught in my palms

  and in this way even the leaving will be beautiful

  as beautiful as that evening I flew back home alone and untouched but never more sure that I loved you

  The city, your city, that I love in the same way that I love you disappearing

  a closing mouth full of gold teeth in the heavy-headed sun resting nestled on the clouds like a lover’s chest.

  HOW MY FEMINISM LEARNED TO TALK

  Its first word was predictably

  No.

  The neighbor boy has a growth spurt this summer

  the wrestling becomes not wrestling

  the point no longer to pin and tickle,

  or to test strength and Houdini escapes

  but now only to pin down and take.

  At the park one afternoon,

  you see yourself in the reflection of the hot metal slide

  as he presses you against it

  you see yourself the way he must see you in that moment

  as though the subject of a photograph cropped at the neck

  and your mouth instinctively deploys a flare

  in hopes that he will return your head.

  You shut your eyes and see a galaxy of flares

  that he will never know,

  and wake up aware of a new world

  where you are simply told not to wear dresses to

  the park anymore

  and you push past the ash smoldering in your new

  woman mouth to say

  that it is not the dress

  but the boy’s hands that should be removed.

  BELLY KISSES

  There is a beautiful woman in my bed.

  After a lot of awkward flirting

  we started kissing on my couch

  then made our way up to my bedroom,

  auxiliary articles of clothing

  (cardigans, leggings, socks) peeling away

  until all tha
t remains between our skins are our simple dresses.

  My first instinct any time my dress is pulled over my head

  is to wrap my arms across my belly

  less in shame

  and more a shield from the disgust the world

  constantly promises for it

  I love my body more days than I don’t and that is a long-

  won battle,

  but asking anyone else to love my body still sometimes

  feels like asking too much.

  Every time I’ve let someone fuck me with my dress still on

  I laid in bed afterwards

  and vowed that I would not let another person inside me

  that hasn’t seen me fully—not just seen but marveled at

  and pressed their lips to the parts deemed unworthy

  a promise I break every time the need to be touched

  outweighs the need for dignity.

  I am still learning how to ask for what I deserve without it

  also sounding like an apology.

  When at last I hold my breath and plunge from my

  dress into open air

  there is a beautiful woman waiting on the other side,

  and unasked she presses her lips to my belly

  before I can reach to cover it.

  And she marvels,

  And she runs her hands over all of me like her palms

  might just slough the world’s cruelty from my skin

  There is this beautiful woman in my bed

  and she holds beauty the same way I hold beauty

  hard won with both hands, overflowing

  When she emerges from the poly/cotton undertow

  of her own dress

  how can I help but love her body the same way

  I have fought every day to love my own?

  And now I kiss, I marvel, I reach

  & her body answers my wanting hands

  She is endless

  We are both so endless and unshielded

  and weightless here

  in my bed

  Weightless

  but not the least bit smaller

  thank God not the least bit smaller

  BURYING MY HUSBAND

  You sure have slept with a lot of husbands

  to never be anyone’s wife

  and at first this loneliness feels something like karma.

  The wedding dream once dense as a tower of cake

  stacked 4 tiers high and iced with buttercream is suddenly cultured down into a hard, sharp sliver on the tongue.