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How do I feel like myself?

It seems to require isolation.

This morning I cycle through the woods,

things I see:

fuzzy cows with long horns on each side

moving—in my eyes they look like machines, robot creatures

almost, and it takes me telling myself again to remember 

they, too, are alive (what does this say except perhaps

I have been spending too much time in the city);

also a pheasant crossing the path, then fluttering away,

I apologize for the disturbance, a "beautiful" loosing my lips

at its colored feathers, maroon, brown, green, ruffled, unruffling;

also soft hairy spheres—witch hazel? my mind offers up, I am not sure

softness along the brown branches on the path;

and things I hear: is it the wind or is it the snowflakes

falling lightly, constant,

all around me.

Bad Words

Running over barbs in my mind

Things you said once I repeat to myself many times

Pain is quick, bodily, unkind

Harder to feel alright

Say I deserve better

But you’re talking to yourself

Not about my needs

About wishing you were someone else

Don’t you think I know self loathing?

Insufficiency an ocean

Criticisms cycle on the shore

Easier to say you want less than you want more

And I don’t need more half truths

Wasted time or you

Misconfigured and uneasy

Saying what you can’t not what you could be

how do you love people for who they are?

for everything they cannot give you?

the imperfect answer to a question that seems so simple

yet is it not beautiful that you can never know the answer?

would it not be boring to be given the same answer you had imagined?

everything is slightly off kilter and I find myself

shaking my head as though I might be able to right it

in that simple movement of my chin up and down

as though rotation were easy enough

I am changing and you are changing

and it is at different speeds and we try to hold our changing together

in the intersections of shared glances, analyzing other couples

half bottles of wine and music and the heavy breath before you finish.

all endings and beginnings and you tell me you cannot be what you think it is 

that I want that I need but that is so limiting and boring and

what are we building, your apology incomplete

not what I would have said, but voiced in your own way

and I see, at least now, in this moment: you trying.

I remember you

implacable in the face of my anger

my technical difficulties

fixed by your steady fingers

tying and retying the knot with such gentle patience

even as I yelled and cried, threw things, disintegrated myself

and rebuilt myself in sequence three times, four times, banged my head

against a wall, and you saying take a breath, trust

my impatience a swarm of bees of wasps mosquitoes and you saying did you try this

and my rage like a fire catching and directing itself at you and your

thumb and pointer fingers on the shoelaces and there,

somehow,

it was released,

it was mended.