​She Waited
 
She sat, waiting for her father to call her, but he never did
So she sat, waiting for a man to call her, but he never did
She was always confused
Never knowing which one of him she really wanted
A father, or a man who reminded her of him
So she waited and waited and waited
And asked God why he never came
 
 
She Left
 
She was tired of waiting
So she left
But she didn’t know where she was going
She was going to find someone who was not like him
But all she could find was his reflection
Is it my eyes? she asked herself
Or do I need new glasses?
It couldn’t possibly be that every man she encountered
Reminded her of the man she wanted to forget
Why does he keep following me? She wondered
Because I don’t even know what the son of a bitch looks like
She lied to herself
 
“Hello,” she said to a stranger.  “My name is Mary.  What’s yours?”
If she gave herself a new persona, maybe people wouldn’t know that she had been abandoned.  In this world, she created herself.  She was her own father and mother and trusted advisor.
“What’s your name?”  She asked the stranger again
Unbeknownst to her, this stranger was also looking for something he’d lost
“Richard,” he said.  Maybe Mary won’t know who I really am, he said to himself reassuringly.
“Wow, Richard,” she said.  “You look like someone I know.”
“So do you,” he said.
“What are you doing tonight?” he asked Mary.
“Nothing much, you?” she answered him back.
“Meet me at the Adirondacks.  There’s supposed to be a lot of fun happening around there,” he said.
“Ok!”  She loved that someone wanted to invite her somewhere.
So she got dressed up in a fancy black dress and put on her best heels.
At 8:00 p.m. she showed up and waited…but he never came.
“Richard?” she shouted into the street, but got nothing in response.
“Richard?” she shouted, this time ten times louder.  She wanted her voice to bring him in from wherever he was.  But Richard was stuck in a traffic jam. 
 
She left, just as he’d arrived.  She swore to herself that she’d never date, or go out with, or make friends with someone named Richard again.  I hate Richards, she said to herself.  They’re so much trouble!  And so untrustworthy.
 
 
She’s Still Looking
 
For what, she isn’t sure.  But she knows it won’t be a man named Richard, or one who reminds her of her father. 

There are some people in this world who manipulate information and make you doubt yourself and your intentions when you seek to shed light on the numerous instances of hypocrisy. And then the chickens come home and karma teaches them that you were right. 

​Stand far away from me
I can’t look you in the eye
Keep your distance
The disappointment disgusts
You didn’t have to be perfect
But no one told you to go ahead and be ratch
Now I must feel sorry for you
And be confused about what I’m really feeling
I know you deserve some sort of punishment
But my heart aches for the innocence I fear you will lose
Can I just hold you one more time?
Before what made you disappoint me happens
Can I stretch time or reverse it
So that I never confront these feelings
Of wanting to be so far away from you
But appreciating the fact that I’m not
And learning to love and see you
Even if sometimes you are what you should not be
Or is it, even if you do what you should not do?

I wrote this after I applied to at least 60 different places in the hopes of finding a better job and heard nothing in response. My spirit was dwindling because I had believed the hype that the more degreed you were, the better your chances of finding respectable employment would be - a position that would allow you to live and still pay off your student debt. But the shittiest economy I had known since 2009 taught me that degrees or not, if the economy is bad - EVERYONE is doing bad, albeit some probably worse than others. So when I was teaching on a salary of about 20K a year, I couldn't stop asking myself: what was the point of getting those degrees anyway? 

~

I keep waiting for someone to save me.
 
Tell me that all those years of work and perfecting my knowledge was worth the lack of friendships and personal hell.
 
Anger turned into bitterness – I hate – downsized corporate gloominess stifles the ability to laugh, turning dreams into blackened smoked licorice
 
Gutting my heart I breathe, resentful of the breath that keeps me alive
 
Scissors to my soul my patience is waning
 
Slavery inside my mind
 
Open door, close another, never seeing, always following glimpses of shadows that fade into night I run like the slave dog chasing a scent
 
Nothing but stars and open fields
 
Where is my heart
 
I left it lying in a field, dancing under the moonlit sky
 
Graves nearby, what is that smell?
 
Hopes buried by economic doom I’m in a dungeon
 
60 tries to escape but rejected every time, why does the rain piss on my clothes
 
I can’t stand the stench of fecal matter inside my brain this is SHIT!
 
Two two-hundred-thousand dollar degrees should be worth more than footprints of promise dissipated by sand
 
Dream or drown
 
It’s the same fuckin funk
 
Fat free fix forever fine fake feminine feast
 
I keep waiting for someone to save me.
 
To rescue me, to tell me that I’m worthy.
 
I keep waiting for the chance to reap the fruits of my labor, and the opportunity that will make me say that the blood, sweat and tears of a $200,000 education were worth it.
 
I’m waiting.
 
And in the meantime I doubt, I fear, and I second-guess.  My soul, my future, my worth.
 
Unhappy, I live.

​When I wrote this I was in a very dark place, desperately seeking transition that I thought would never come.  And then it did.  Literally after I wrote this piece, the Lord sent me a dove carrying an olive leaf. And shortly after that, I was free. 

~