The raw emotions of a woman (3 page)

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Authors: Suzanne Steinberg

Tags: #love, #poetry, #empowerment, #wisdom, #raw emotions

BOOK: The raw emotions of a woman
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There are people inside the niches of our
minds, hovering quietly as they turn us into them, slowly with
painted on masks and wardrobes crafted by hand, and we go with
them, hand in hand, dancing around in circles singing the same
songs they do, we go freely and easily as if there has never been a
war, as if there was never a side to choose or a grudge or a deep
and a sticky emotion or a profound thought, we go as if we are
liquid turning into any shape the water lets us, and as we collide
with this world of sunshine perfection, shiny and brand new, every
face we give is adorable.

But in the mist of violence and love we find in
the pain there is no perfection, we find the lowest of the low
places to be, the unwanted girl who is so submissive that men have
destroyed her brain because they thought she was a toy and they
thought her care was slutty, because she was so easily bendable and
her will wasn’t on fire. Her brain didn’t speak ten different
languages of I told you so, her heart was innocent and naive, and
she was a horrible person for being that way, a witch in disguise,
a woman that was above them, so she was taken as a bird in a cage,
and told to entertain others without the knowledge that all of
their hearts had been tied like strings around her neck, that she
could never untie, and she would strangle herself to death singing
and entertaining and celebrating with others.

And as others melted into the surface like oil
and gold globing up the middle ground and the outer rims of hands
squirming to get out from underneath, we hear the soft subtle
crunch of a woman who is nowhere to be seen.

+++

The inner voice

What are we doing here, is the sound in the dark,
a closed door or a shut voice, that is circling me over and over
again. Like a finger drawn in the sand, like a beauty mark that
will never go away no matter how it stretches. I am here yells a
voice in the dark as we all reach for it, the mysterious eyes of
owls who watch us, knowing us since we were 12 or 13, before we
believed in miracles and logic, thinking life only changed once we
got to be a year older. I am here, says all those who feel alone,
they quietly whisper it to one another like they are in a prison
with thin walls. I am here, reach for my hands, feel the passion
against my beating heart as I run past you again.

And in a race made for one is a woman, running
in the same circle over and over again. And the man chasing her
around watches casually as she double passes him with sweat, mud
and struggle written on her face. Don’t try so hard, the man says
grimacing to trip her, to be on the same level as her, to explain
to her as he does to all women how easy sex can be, it is just two
people talking, not one woman asking a million people to accept
her. And he smiles lightly, reaching for her but knowing he will
miss, always getting to be almost there, before she quietly sneaks
somewhere else, under another rock in a stream that will evaporate
one day. I am here he says as she begins to cry, stark in a black
and white world where love has become a nasty word in seduction,
used against the weak who don’t know self-preservation. I am too
good for you she yells, wishing she wasn’t so out of breath so it
would sound better. And the guy shyly smiled, if only I could hear
he says, but I haven’t heard a word you have said in years, I am
only watching you from afar. And in that dark moment she realizes
she is stuck in this never ending loop, always searching for a
reason to stop, and all that she can create are the wisps of wind
as she passes others like the breath of kisses of an animal who is
much larger and greater then it will ever realize.

 

+++

Slipping on intimacy

I see you, can’t you see
me, staring through a thin plastic curtain whispering names of
people who we used to know, as if we both see the same shade of
yellow, as if we were machines with zeroes and ones and everything
could be perfect somewhere, perfect in its language with all its
dots and letters, and in-between spaces, with all its yes and no,
coming with a timed sense of perfection. I want you, don’t you want
me, come the whispers in-between us, come the hearsays and the
gossip and the empty promises that return around again, like
headless bugs. And we sit there unaware of ourselves smelling up
the world with our half thoughts and attempts of conversation that
go nowhere put to a strange laugh or a sneeze, or a bathroom pass.
And we sit beginning to know life all over again, thinking it could
all happen in a split second if we allowed it to, it could happen
in five minutes if we pretend to skip over all our tragedies in
simple conversation. And we lay there inside of one another, and it
feels like luke warm water, hoping for an answer in the dark
through a daily conversation about nothing, and we live bleeding
but we deny it too easily for an ease of gossip or random passion,
avoiding life like seeing our own facial expressions in a stream of
water.

+++

Hiding

Inside of another jar of another soul are
memories and words and magic thoughts that we all so easily pick up
like Velcro, tying ourselves to our dreams through choices and
actions, stereotypes. We live like we are children in a zoo of
cages constantly searching for the impressions of footsteps of
those who have ran away, searching for the worst words in a
horrific situation, or the best forms of praise. We look forward to
the nothingness of a blank, thinking it is work to write our story,
create our words out of plaster from the molded faces of paid
models. We think we can fight for a voice in a world of silent
partners as we constantly find the easy way out that no one will
notice. We are the soldiers of time, living in the after-thought of
a monster and the pre-conceived idea of someone’s pain who hasn’t
yet been born. Living in another time with a different set of
backbones and situations that no one has heard of yet, beginning to
find our voice in situations that could be juxtaposed into the
right brain as wrong, so quickly with a thought, with a solid step
in another direction, with a rain of tears, and in fear we run into
the holes we can fit into, not aware of the alternatives, as we
wait for the others. But as we sit there alone, shaking in this
sweet spot of life, we find nothing but the bird’s eye view of the
city we have escaped.

+++

Games we play

There are a million different ribbons inside of me
all leading back to you, this strange little point shaped like a
locked door, unhinged and inhibited with strange wooden lines. I
want you say the strangers as they walk by this door way made for
one. But none of them know me outside of the entanglements of
sensitivities and outer beliefs that we carry on about, but we
pretend anyways that it is enough, that laughter and joy and
innocence can be the glue in a house instead of hard work and
sacrifice, we pretend because that is what TV commercial’s imply we
do. And we sit there me and this locked door and a million eyes,
all expecting the small simple movement of a turn of the wrist to
let them into this place within myself, that not even I can go. And
I lie simply as we carry on a dance, telling them of fortunes and
exterior political beliefs that I let lay on my tongue, the ones
they teach as lofty principles in school, why hate can be viewed as
love. And I cry as I explain the knives I have used to change my
words so they are acceptable cascading over an untouchable place,
over my naked body and vulnerable inner life, and we all seem to
enjoy that a bit better, without the truth. A game of chasing mice
and cheese into corners. I am in love with you, don’t you know,
says someone casually as I glance away, wishing for a moment that
words were curved instead of straightforward and I nod as if I am
gambling on slots instead of bluffing, as if human bodies were weak
in lust instead of powerful. And we both cascade over each other
like the water does underneath waves. I am wrong I say secretly
like the prisoners as they search for redemption in a new society
where their food and lodging will always be paid for in return for
constant submission. And I smile trying again the locked door in my
mind, finding that I will always remain on the outside.

+++

The women in waiting

I am loved you know women
say during coffee as they gossip about the reason the world
rotates, or when it should stop and who is who when the night
permits itself to change into dawn. And while they sit gossiping
over a table, they remain always ready for adventure by buying
dresses and shoes and beauty marks to become someone at another
party with a different celebration around someone they haven’t been
yet, someone perhaps they are not ready for, the person before the
other person knew itself they would say in tag lines of adages to
explain why they are the one who socially deserves the change the
most, not the other women who have been captured in their parent’s
homes, or worse in a societal dungeon. And they will ring true
empowerment as they run over men, run towards them in desperation
for another person they haven’t yet cocooned into yet, the bite of
love that has tickled them to death in a bath-tub. The because I
told you so that is why I am in love with you moments when men
pretend they are kissing innocent non-agenda children who are
submissive to their labyrinthine of emotions and career. She just
smiles and does what I tell her to, they say in half spoken lies
across locker rooms. I am here you know, the women say casually as
they skim the water a man lays in, touching him with soft spoken
words of faraway places that might peak his interest, lullabies to
the insane as they sit in cubicles typing about the weather. I
might be everything and nothing, the women simply say picking the
verbs and adages that sound nicer. And the men in their hindsight
keep searching. And the women continue to watch them through
windows of coffee shops waiting for the parties and celebration
that never seem to come, wondering what makes a man strong, why are
they never as gullible and frightened as they are.

+++

Walls

The
sing song butterfly that comes around the sick and the hopeless as
they pretend they understand one another again, as they dance in
the streets and they act as if love was a mystery instead of
circle, that five people constantly pass amongst themselves, the
five people who are good enough. And the words we exchange sting as
we dance along the moments in time, as we pray among the rhythm of
a simple day that has stretched longer than it used to, but we
remain beside one another, in this paradox of what we used to be
but now what we can’t accept, what is forbidden and we walk on tip
toes about it. And we talk as if we know love, but we don’t, we
only know what other people have brought back from the books they
have read and the conversations they have had with angels, but we
pretend anyways to get closer, to find the common ground of so, so
and okay, and half boredom in a holey temple. We want to pretend to
know one another so well so when the ribbons come to tie us
together to explain God or whoever or a servant that is brave, that
it will explain why we loved one another on a strange day, when the
wind had stopped moving and our only dreams were of paradise in a
guilt stricken dead end, waiting for the walls to cave
in.

+++

Fantasies

Deep inside there is a lost voice, a hopeless cause of those
who it sees through a narrow slit, a lets begin again as we dance
to the same tune we have always played around in, the endless
vibration of a life, of a person’s heart. And we dance and smile as
we remember the way the words rose to meet one another, the voice
on the other side as we played along with the mystery assigning
blame and purpose and re-destroying our actions for new choices,
new beliefs, new bodies, running and searching for the same
faces.

There is another lost cause will say the men on
an adventure, kissing one too many women, thinking one too many of
the same thoughts that have created bricks instead of doorways.
There will be another you, once this you is lost, they say casually
like sunshine on a rainy day, like a broken arm on a boy who jumped
too high on his bed. There will always be another way to be
perfect, and we believe him, these mystery men with perfect vision
who ignite lust and passion with a drop of sweat, with an inner
belief in beauty even if they are ugly on the inside, and we run to
them as if they are sunshine and the answer for internal suffering,
controlling doorways and mysteries, and we laugh when we realize
the men we loved were never real men but fantasies. But pretend
men, monsters we created during dreams about being alive, but
really we were asleep when we met them. And all the courage it took
for us to change, to look someone in the eye, to look beautiful
enough in a summer’s dress, was just to touch a cloud in a blue sky
that was 300 feet off the ground.

+++

Womanhood

There is often a darkness inside of an eye that catches the
sun. It blinks to see clearly but through the tears and the rust
and the glimmer on metal tables, there is nothing but an unusual
reflection. It is a strange world when the women began to emulate
men. Become them with every footprint and sly remark, with the
cutting judgments as they attempt to bestow a sense of
revenge.

“There are never enough people,” will yell the
conservatives as they pile on the births as a way of making
everyone happy, one more mouth to feed, thought to have. A person
with a passionate drop on their finger as they run from face to
face to face, force feeding from their hands.

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