More Under Here Somewhere

When I'm on. You know, ON.

When sunshine split's the top of my legs into an ass poets cry for not being able to capture it in prose.

When the balls are flying in the air, whack whacking in and out of my hands, and all three rings of our big top circus are lit up and roaring with amazing feats and magical wonder.

When it's him and it's me and it's all of a sudden a big we around the dinner table.

Then it's easy to know what we're here for. What we're doing. Who we are. What we make and why I'm here with him.


And when he grins or actually even laughs out loud and it's because of me. Not the ass or the circus or the way I hold all of this together, just me. I know we're the kind of related, the kind of  family that can get away with fucking; mediocre or not.

Then I want it to be enough. I know that it IS enough, should be would be could be if I let it.  I WILL it to be enough.  Like a child on those stupid spinning flat merry go rounds I squeeze my eyes shut, forcing my inner self out of my ever spinning head, watching from the sidelines but never ever letting my white knuckled fingers let go of any of it.

But I'd like him to confuse me. I'd like him to play fast and loose with my heart. I'd like him to use a word I've never heard in a way that adds a new crayon to the box in my head. I'd like him to spar and spear and throw me for a loop. I'd like him to wear me out and fill me in.


I think it drives me bonkers that he's always just him. Steady. Unmoved by my imbalances. Unable or uninterested in playing push and pull.  Rock like.

And I love rocks. Oh I do. I will lug a giant boulder home from another state if it's curves strike me as enduringly linear enough.  The textures. The solid heavy UMPH of them. I imagine they must hold surprises under their craggy skin. Mush or sparkle or ridges unseen by anyone else. Places that must just long to be brought into the light for one very special person to admire.

When I was a kid we'd pound rocks together, trying to break them apart and see inside. When they split you could hold them back together along the break and it was like creating the rock yourself. But on the inside a rock is usually just exactly the same as it was whole. Except now you have two rocks and they're broken and jagged on the side you broke. It might take a hundred years for the elements to wear it smooth in ways that make it it's own rock and  by then you'd never know which ones used to be a whole together.


Our outsides ARE our insides. Just worn down in interesting ways by the elements. That's why we love children  so much… they're still inside out.  Of course we wear them down anyway. We call it "growing up"


If you ever wonder whether a rock wonders about any of this .. Don't. Because if they do they do it in such a completely different way that your head will hurt just considering it. You will not find symmetry or recognition or anything except more rocky edges.  And also reels and reels of rock porn.

And your rock will not wonder about you. Your rock accepts you exactly the way you are, if you can imagine that. Yeah. THE WAY YOU ARE. *eyes wide* On your lousiest day even.


I think all the elements love and hate the rocks and that's why they wear away at them any way they can. Try to tease them into being something else. Because rockiness is just so inert and perfect and implacable. I imagine myself as the earth throwing itself against his rockiness. I imagine I light fire and spray water and blow air across him waiting for him to reveal what's under his stony exterior. I imagine beaches of tiny rock laughing under the waves and sun and suck and ebb.

Of course I'm not looking for him. He's right there on the outside just exactly the way he is on the inside.

I'm looking for me. No, not this me. Some other me I'm not already tired of. Tell me have you seen me? Because I must be more under here somewhere.