Goodnight, She Said

I love red hair, she said to me.
She was pretty, a real Celt, all freckled with baby face blue eyes
hair black as Tar & Cat & Witch & all the things inside her sticky brain.
I love red hair. Long red hair. She loved Red Hair more than she loved Woman.
I learnt that exception to the rule – some friend of sister's friend whose copper locks
she would have grabbed in spite of what he packed.
She was pretty. Not That Pretty I would have collapsed at her feet & said
let me Eat you all I want is to eat you tongue & throat & breast
& belly button & that OTHER place I never found a gentle name for I would
do anything for you just to hold & comfort & tell me I can Live.

She wasn't drop dead dying massacre the brain gorgeous. Intelligent supposedly.
Not That Intelligent. Smart enough to know the difference between cotton silk acrylic wool
every thread you could ever put through a fabric in someone's head. Not clever
enough to figure that there are easier ways of stitching up the human heart like a haggis
but smart enough to know the difference between puppet & string & how GRAVITY
Interacts with someone collapsed at your feet saying
I would do Anything if you would just give me what I need & she knew more
than me that thing was not her but her sex.

She Was creative. That's the concession I make when I think of the way she span
(on her spindle, her little wheel the needle Come Here Sleeping Beauty I have something
FOR you). She knew her thing with makeup & Black plastic dresses & razorblades
& nail varnish & knit. She manipulated polaroids. Stills catching some
UGLY METAPHORICAL URGENCY. Of me. Her. Her work in many forms her work
& its Pygmalion monstrosity. Painted them with Chemical Facades. Wool over eyes.
The pills on her shelf that stared at me for three months or more because I was too good to take
them Down & Read The Back (SEROXAT) but never again never again fail to read the back
no matter what trust or haggis or knot it costs the First Thing you do when you get
in the house is LOOK AT THE DRUGS (SEROXAT) because you never know what trussed up
mess of decay lies at the bottom of the human head in concrete shoes or whatever
Drowning there. Because you know they only give you one version of the truth,
however true it has their own abnormal emphasis. I like Red hair. For example
emphasis in sly placement. Red hair is gorgeous. You would Look Gorgeous
if you had Red hair. & me for one moment imagining her sitting beside my ankles saying
please I would do Anything all I want is to turn your insides out so deep you would
forget Everything for just one moment Except Me.

But she stitched my hand instead & I began to learn the dexterity of each
piano strung finger & I noticed how the smell of her on my fingers drowned out
any smell of my own. & the game we played with my weight & my hands &
how she lay & took it in & held only my Red Hair & I would lie in silence.
Anticipation. Waiting. For her fingers lips knee some grip whatever. Something.
Wondering how she could have Done This, achieved this mysterious post-coital
place I'd never learnt how to feel. Why? Because I couldn't I needed help I needed love I needed
SOMETHING. Anything more than Nothing. & she finding this place from me
in Silence without even a gasp as if she was too awkward in my company to talk.
& me waiting for my just desserts & when I finally said but aren't you –
Her reply I don't believe you said that I can't believe you you've really hurt me saying that
& letting me cry myself to sleep
even though she could hear me cry.

She kept telling me it was no big deal why was it such a big deal it was Nothing
but then she'd had years to be a SLUT & learn that & I'd had NOTHING in those same years
to compare with all my dreams my fantasies & those brief bursts of awakening
I felt almost every day caused by seeing a wrist a look in an eye a gesture the line of
shoulderblades those adult feelings that never got pushed all the way but left me
bent backwards with her limbo dancing.

I Love Red Hair. Through fisherman's brine for concrete shoes in the darkness while
she Listened to me cry & pretended to be sleeping I thought of Red Hair & how
that Christmas I dyed my hair & didn't Know
but later knew she had spent that Christmas fucking that Kathy Bitch while I dyed my hair
like holly berries for her return. & how come as I remembered this crying myself to sleep
again I couldn't understand how I was even That Bitch's equal & yet she wanted
to spend every day with me. Telling me how screwed up her sticky brain felt & letting
me know wordlessly I had NO RIGHT to make her feel guilty after
Everything she had Been Through (SEROXAT)
when she scratched up her arms in front of me (SEROXAT) played with matches (SEROXAT) put that cigarette
out on her hand & showed me what she'd done (SEROXAT) & me dancing on my threads for her
Nicki you must not hurt yourself Not Ever there is nothing wrong with you you are Lovely
& Sweet & Gentle & Kind & Thoughtful & all the other feminine Virtues I can think
I will do Anything. Anything in the world & her: why are you with me when I am Like This
& then in one of those Other Conversations: but I think of you more as A Friend. Every time
the subject of sex in spite of her deciding we should Go Out Together after me waiting
months. & my throat with an apple caught in the center not knowing what to say that I could
say without Her Reply: maybe I'll just slit my throat then BUT NICKI YOU'RE HURTING ME.
A bruise on my arm. That was her joke her gesture of affection me making a joke of it too &
another bruise & another & the bruises no one saw because there was no one to Talk To
except Her.

Me snapping screaming at her I'm not willing... willing... but not even willing to finish
the sentence because I didn't know the end. But how she would use Kathy: Kathy could have
been deep & meaningful Kathy could sing & play guitar when I stayed at Kathy's she had
a rubber sheet on her bed Kathy slept with a hundred men & women. Notches notches ugly fat
notches in a post & technically, technically I'd had none.
I didn't warn her no clues no hint just a silent decision she went home that following Christmas.
A fight every week, for the last three months; me trying to unravel the threads that held together
her head. Though when she rang & I chokingly coughed it out that golden apple of revalation
that wouldn't let me cry, she said she knew. Even she could tell she'd Broken Me.

And Even in saying it I was knitted. Some dark & brutal part of her caught up in the ball
of wool around my neck. I reeled with freedom only hung on so long because I thought
things would get BETTER she would grow up & SLEEP with me the way I'd slept with her.
Not free though, just reeling. Because still I would have done Anything.
Anything for Anyone I Fell For & how I managed to lay guilt upon Kim the way Nicki had
done with me so subtly & how I disagreed with everything Anthony did that next
summer because to Agree would be to be Oppressed Again Wounded Again because
I would sink so low & would have done Anything for him, told him all the truth of Her.

In return his Hatred Repugnance Disgust & he too manipulated me I remember that vicious
Snake-Eyed Smile across the bar when he put his arm around the seventeen year old
SLUT he threw at me just to fucking insult me get rid of me scorn me tell me I was
Nothing To Him because he couldn't handle what I'd told him
none of it not even when I said I loved him especially not that.

& then Dan. Dan too, to continue the web the knit the spiral down pattern
the puppet strings & I would do Anything, dream of you weep for you
come to Another Land even though I knew, knew he didn't want
probably felt that Hatred Repugnance Disgust & all because I would
Do Anything for you your love your touch your sex & how I want
that body brain & stupid little bitch thinking of the Pills & Lou
(Kathy) Lou who I have no right over who loves him knows him more
than I ever could dare to dream because my Dreams Are Small Now,
spiderwebbed puppetted knitted, bound up in What She Did &
It Will Never Happen die like this you'll die like this and
you who need to know everything suffering this childish Indignation
Humiliation
& me no longer too good to stare at the pills & not take them Down
& Read (SEROXAT)
finding nothing but antibiotics but you never can tell
& Read The Back (SEROXAT) never again never again fail to read the back
no matter what trust or stitched up haggis heart or knot it costs the First Thing you do when
you get in the house is LOOK AT THE DRUGS whatever form they take within the sticky brain
Because you know they only give you one version of the truth, even when you trust them
however true it has their own abnormal emphasis. Even when you trust them more
than life & haggis & knot & dream of them each night their sex touch brain
you know they will never hurt you Read The Back (SEROXAT).

In the fall her letter. I have pierced my tongue because it
gives more sensation. I have been out with Other People I have Slept With other people
bitch bitch SLUT how dare she do that to me when I Have Not; But you are a Uniquely Kind &
Caring Individual those exact words. Uniquely Kind & Caring because no one else
had quite the same deeply bleeding trussed up heart how Quickly she must have Recovered
from her Trauma to have Slept With Other People. How many diseases she could have
caught the hives her mother thought were Scarletina but were
a farewell gift from that Kathy Bitch. How much Guilt she could have spread.
Me ironically me still in that bruised state of technicality MISS INNOCENT & hating
every fucking moment of my fucked up chastity because of all the shadows she
had spread in my sticky brain. As if I had taken on the GEIST that had knotted up her head or her
Butterfly Powder had rubbed off on my sleeve now her saying to me I would do
Anything. Down on my knees offering you puppet strings Anything. Even in spite
of the fact I'd bleached out that FUCKING RED HAIR. Her offer of love better still
her offer of SEX.

& me recalling in vital agony every detail of every night I had spent lying in
That Bed beside her sleeping satisfaction wondering Why she would Not
Touch Me & yet have me Get Her Off in spite of her pills & their highly
Selective Side Effects & in the end knowing that
like me she Simply Could Not
DEAL
with the fact that I was Virgin.