incompletes

did you forget the taste of broken english mixed into your first meal?
the scrape of misplaced adjectives from your mother's lips
you always failed to hear the music in the dichotomy of your tongue
always mistaking your stained glass for broken pieced together windows



these are my grandmother's feet
walking in shoes too big
pretending not to notice
because real women know how to save face
toes spaced out
tryin to keep grip of the world running beneath me

these are my grandmother's feet
walking in shoes too big
pretending not to notice
because real women know how to save face
toes spaced out
tryin to keep grip of the world running beneath me

i came looking for breathe in lungs
full searching for missing ribs to hold them


Dear Life,
you taught me to never build bridges so i wouldnt learn the pain of learning when its neccesary to burn them. now i stand here on the bridge to nowhere watching Russia and feeling lonely. wondering why you just didnt teach me to save me from myself. forced me to admit when i need help instead of just taking leaps of faith into my future.

©, 2012, Tiffany "Spokenheart" Shack

 

Victims of Sudden Impact

I am afraid of my womb
afraid that it is barren
that life will not find hope within me
so I resolved to just not want children
decided that I have no desire to see movement ripple across my belly
because I am fearful it can not
I have an aunt that only wanted baby dolls for Christmas
and had sex with strange men because her uterus was in denial
I have an uncle unable to carry on his father's name
because life doesn't live inside of him
I have a grandmother who lost 75% of her kids
and a sister she knew only inside her mother's tomb
have you ever felt life inside your womb that didn't move when it met air?
remembered the taste of a lost voice in the back of your throat
There is something so broken about being the survivor
there is something so beautiful about being broken
about feeling life running through your fingertips like grains of sand
washing the clinging of loss out of your hair after a goodbye
maybe that's why I move like the world is running away from me
like I’m avoiding the vacancy love has created in my belly
is there a name for a fear of having a cavity
where your child should be
or is that just called womanhood?
will we ever be more than ovaries?
& how useless is a fear that I won’t carry a child for the woman of my dreams
how laughable that we sometimes pick names
how admirable that we still dream
still assign features to a child that doesn't exist
your hair with my color
your eyes my lips
our skin
I even dream of the children we never had
all soft skin and kinky headed
praying to mother that look like mutt saint maries
they know our faces from the arms of women who live without fear
& whisper love into an air that feels like our skin
they kiss us with lips that feel like shadows
& hands that hold us like secrets
I’ll tell her they loved us from beneath our skins
on dark nights when we felt life breathing between us
& they left us beneath our words spoken with fear on our teeth
hiding behind ivory plates that could not speak our reflection
they will probably say it was because we were two women in love
but maybe it’s because I was afraid
and there is no room for life where fear manifests
or maybe it was just because there is a hollowness that sleeps where our daughter should be
©, 2012, Tiffany "Spokenheart" Shack

Dandelion Dust

dandelions roots hang from ceilings with petals like pigtails in dead girl's hair
words fall like hypocritical stones and petals scatter like prayers
lives blow into the wind
o father you've done it again
forgotten that dandelions werent built for weight
&& there is only so much one can take
before they scatter
how may lives will it take before it matters
before people stop thinking its just oversensitivity
how much awareness does it take to end kid bullying
how many casualties have to be muraled on walls or souls before we stop teaching hatred
and start teaching acceptance
quick to wound maybeits true that all humans are born into petulance
and then taught to be good
what other reasons can we find for dandelions that are never understood
just dismembered by the winds of our mouth
we just teach our kids that the real world will eat you up and hang you like moss
if you dont sharpen your tongue and harden your fist
if you dont consume hatred and speak death out your lips
sticks and stones can break our bones but we all know it is words that will slit our wrists
that will tie our nooses and dance pills cross our lips
how is a 10 yr old suppose to understand that life will get better
that bullies are just one of life's storms if they can just make thru the weather
all seasons must come to a past
or maybe it is us who dont understand that dandelions werent meant to last
but to scatter and plant seeds
send messages and leave
simply built to be captured by wind
while mothers are forced to lend
their wombs to God's examples

©, 2012, Tiffany "Spokenheart" Shack

Marrow Soup

Its feels like my bones are emptying out
marrow moving through my nose clear as breath
does blood smell like tears when marrow looks like carbon dioxide
i wonder whose closet i will rest in when my veins empty out
or will you hang me from your ceiling and learn anatomy first hand
my grandmother's feet ache on my ankles at night
sometimes all the way up to my thighs
& i knows its just her leaving me all over again
i see her everytime my sister has a child
& wonder if she sleeps in my womb as well
i even forget like she did sometimes
look in the mirror and ask whose daughter i am
whose child on a milk carton not bothered to be aged?
maybe she just didnt want to come home
maybe im just stuck inside my flat footed heart
have you ever come knocing to see if i had finally learnt how to be still
or are u just waiting to burn my empty bones
& place them on your mantelpiece like a conquered trophy
i wonder if my lover ever tastes my marrow i leave on her lips
if she ever scrubs my residue off her face when she feels i am never leaving
if she will store my bones in a canvas bag tied to the ceiling
and call it a treasure
fingerpaint them & call them ancient relics
i wonder if our bones will ever meet in the same body
her fingers on our daughter with my toes
or our ribs in the next life creating one being
mine always too big of course
always too full of air
and never able to breathe
like even my body expects more of me than i can give
searching for air in the joints of my bones
always needing more space from myself
im sure if i could regenerate my hands would be the first to go
as my heart packs up in the middle of the night to flee to my lover's chest
afaraid my feet wont understand the pleasures of just leaving sometimes
& my bones just lie there leaking out a new beginning

©, 2012, Tiffany "Spokenheart" Shack