"Fuck This Shit"
An Autobiography For Riot Grrls
#5

Self-Portrait

copyright (c) 1996 by Annalee Newitz

1.

with you gone I can finally be in love
under this impossible
blue hurricane sky
where clouds really are spaceships
and we meet
aliens who want to change the world

in real life of course you (the proverbial you, you know who you are)
scared me half to death
with that pocket knife you used to spin, blades opened, between your finger
and the table
and with your strange, dark, fat
emoting
about how your sister's half-naked suicide attempt
was all you needed to know about female desire

2.

darling reader you can
understand now how I want to get
to the silent part, the blue sky part
where I eat chocolate ice cream with angels
and you don't slam me down into a ready-made psychological landscape

yes I've memorized you but I'm looking
for the shape of my body now
my only body
(pale pink with dirt-colored hair)
alive, and survived, and flopping over with sleep

3.

which brings me back, somehow, to the aliens --
as they boil up out of the crack I left in space --
and what I still love

in between the knives and sisters
there were trees
eating light on long afternoons between rocks
where you taught me how to imagine
aliens

and I taught you
this

3/5/96

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