You could have taken heed of the men who appreciated you, and not the women who felt you could look better than how you did. These women could have just been jealous, after all. Again, I forgive you.

Through the years you gained weight, but through all these years, too, you have displayed the strength and smile of your Mom, and the wit and character of your Father.

You listened to the wrong people, and this affected your sense of self. When men came or gazed at you for more than the usual time it would take for a glance, you dismissed them, thinking they were looking past you. There were men who attempted to get to know you, but you withdrew when things went beyond casual for fear that they wouldn’t like you anyway. You thought that your appearance won’t hold them for long.  You always told them, I’m sparing you from the one who will come along – she will be way better than I am, and you’d have the last laugh.

Indeed they did not hold you for long. Only for six months to a year of getting to know you.

How crazy of you. It wasn’t your appearance that repelled them after a year. It was your close-mindedness. Close-mindedness stripped you of your allure.

When you gained confidence and began to date and have fun, you had another fear. You felt that the men that gravitated towards you weren’t your type at all that you didn’t give them a chance after the first meeting. The problem, Kimee, is not these “inadequate” men. The problem, Kimee, is that you were afraid that it would work out with these “inadequate” men. You thought too highly of yourself, you made the gods chuckle.

Your fear of things working out with the “inadequate” ones (the guy whom you unfairly judged as not smart enough, the guy whose hobbies were too lowbrow for your pretentious ass, the guy whose pronunciations falsely blurred his character) got you entangled with those who were far worse: the unavailable men.

To flirt with the man with a girlfriend, the man married for twelve years, would be harmless and would go nowhere. Or so you thought. You knew that they had hardly remained harmless.

You are now at a stage in your life when friends are settling down or are comfortable in serious relationships. You are not. You don’t have to, but at least you have to be open to possibilities. Once and for all, drop the excuse that you want to focus on your mother at the moment. Or your career—you know it’s not what you want to build anyway. No one ever said that things cannot be dealt with all at the same time. You aren’t your family’s messiah, nor is your family your sole responsibility.

About not wanting to get married with your Significant Other, and not wanting to have children – let’s talk about it when he comes.

I hope tomorrow you wake up feeling better and newer. Remember that the rest of the men you will meet are broken like you are. But real beauty, as oils and essences, flows only from the cracks.

in white, and “hideously fat” in college.

my dreams in them, I wonder

if you would piece together all

those moments when you had

the chance and save me from

the confusing lure of

curves and cuntentment.

I wonder if you would spend

your nights in solitary bleating

for lost time, all the lost time

at other meadows looking

at a flock of conventional girls

finding nothing of me in them

they with the constitution of

goats.

I wonder if you would ever

think that my new-found fire

for sapphic territories may be

an aversion to yours, to your

blankness;

an Eve rising from exhaustion

Eve turning to Eve, exploring

none of you, none of swine–

only the sweet honeysuckle from

full teat, maternal measures

made carnal.

But I would long for you still

your protrusion, the turning

of gears and lock and key

opening futures in front porches

and beach fronts, the mystery of

you in palm fronds,

my unquestionable submission to you

your drone against my moan

the possibility of contentment.

of falling and rolling off to the unknown

right when I’m ripe for the picking

of sitting beside pilots in cockpits

savoring the turbulence before a crash

of leaving before children and old age

make the magic wear off

of punctuating an incendiary speech

with a bullet

of levitating elsewhere upon

a cloud of cigarette smoke

of vanishing after laying

a manuscript to bed

of permanent curtain calls

of invoking God after the last climax

of dying young

and letting the story live on.

lingering

like the gaping hole you left —

the dumb stretch of

no conversation I desperately

blur with smoke

and bitters.