Autograph Penis by Tanager H

Author:Tanager, H. [Tanager, H.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Memoir, Performance Poetry
Published: 2014-11-02T16:00:00+00:00

My Lifelong Love for a Woman

When I met Kat, she was a homeless 21 year old with a big laugh and an unstoppable body, all baby tees and worn out jeans. I’m pretty sure I asked her if she was a poet, and she said, Yeah, I am, and I’m also fucking Jamie! She is known for her enthusiasm. We crossed paths nicely for a while. She’s one of those momma hen type people, always taking care of lost people with broken wings. At that time I had a poem about a friend who had breast cancer, and her mom had breast cancer, so we connected on a poem level as well.

After my second baby was born, I still went to the slam, but I looked and felt pretty draggled. I would stand around with the loitering poets on the sidewalk, sometimes bumming a smoke from someone. Kat said, If you ever need a smoke, call me, and I will bring one to your house.

I was never going to do that. But a month later, I was driving out to the suburb of Tracy, to turn around and come back. I wasn’t going anywhere. I just needed to have the kids all nice and contained in the backseat. It was a drizzly winter day, and the hills along 580 sursurrated by in their magical fairy green that they have for just a couple months of the year.90 I didn’t know what I was going to do when I got back to the house. Being a mom can be really hard, and lonely.

I called Kat.

Remember how you said you would bring me a cigarette?

Just asking for help made my voice break. I am a person who has a pretty tough shell, so tough I don’t always seem human. I didn’t ask to have such a big layer between me and other people. I don’t do it for a reason. It just is who I am. Mighty coping monster layer on the outside, then half of me shiny on the inside, and the other half of me floating out in the world having hardly anything to do with what’s happening in my corporeal self.

But I do break. By this time, even though I hate cracking in front of others, I’m okay with it, because I know I just don’t seem like I could be soft or accessible or real until the façade comes down. However briefly.

That day when I asked Kat, Remember how you said you would bring me a cigarette? she caught me in the warmth of her voice and said, Oh honey, I’m coming. And she did. She brought her roommate who watched Blue’s Clues with the kids while Kat and I sat outside, nearly silent, inhaling Camels.

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