There I did it
I dropped the letter in the mailbox
with my latest writings
to you
my friend
and my best
critic
the one I trust
because you generally say
such nice things about what I do
There I did it
I wrote about my mother
and cried at the end of it all
But truthfully
the vulnerability I just shared with myself
this past week,
and that I exposed in the rooms
with others
who don’t really know my name
and really don’t really care about me
that vulnerability doesn’t feel as bad
as the one I’m feeling now
the one that is being windswept
by the carriers’ bags,
the wings of the steel eagles
that is making its way
across Ole’ Miss
and plains
and mountains
and deserts
down to your street
and your doorstep
and your hands
and your caring eyes
yes the very eyes that
I know I can look into
and see loving
friendship
Ahhhhhh!
This exposure feels
so strange
I’m standing naked in
a line of girls taking a shower
in the mountains
I’m running through one of my own
dreams
the ones that I wake up sweating from
because I believed that I was
naked
head to toe
and everyone saw every
tiny ugly mole
and every crevice and wrinkle
on my usually
carefully
protected
covered body
That is how I feel
about sending you these writings
I feel naked and exposed and
ohsovunerable that I can
barely spit out the aawwwouuch!!
at the thought
that you might
read what I wrote
and you might
not understand it
or you’ll read it at a different pace
the one that I didn’t intend
the one that belongs after all
to the reader
the one I have to let go of
because after all that is
the writer’s task
to be in the middle of the
word, thought, letter, key, dot, comma and space
in the breath, the idea, the image, the feeling and the
connecting line of brain/heart/body power
that gives the things she writes about
LIFE
So dear, make me feel
better
tell me when you read it
that you liked it even if you didn’t
No, that’s not it
Don’t tell me you didn’t like it
even if it’s not the truth
no, wait a minute
cover me up with
a blanket of hugs and kisses
and then tell me the truth
the whole truth and nothing but it
and then tell me whatever
you read, felt, thought, believed
learned or didn’t learn
or what you wanted to know more
about what I wrote
and what I sent to you
today when
I put those pieces of
white paper with
printed words
that came from my heart
and that healed me from my hurt
and that I just had to put to paper
and that I just had to send you
because I trust you goddammit
even if I I get so darn afraid
and windswept and wobbly in
all of myself
because of this
awesome feeling of
vulnerability.
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