Window Turtle

You're not there, and it kills me

When I close the door, come back 12 hours

later,

it's as if nothing has happened

Nothing has happened, and it

kills me

I'm always eyeing the corner suspiciously,

waiting for somethingsomeone

to pop out with a knife or balloons

Someone told me once that I ought to stop

Changing in front of the window

that stripping so carelessly wouldn't work to my

advantage that

I was bearing my soul bare to the world with

in return

I told her, I'm changing for my window

turtle and bemus-

ed watched her turn confused and plum red

My fly on the wall unwavering supervisor

Little wooden window turtle

I've had it since I was small

One day, I will leave it on a windowsill

unpacked

Leave it behind

Leave it all behind me

And the landlord will throw it away

with my uncollapsed boxes and ex-

boyfriend's sweatshirts

I'm thinking about all these places I'll visit

Once or even twice

Skip through them like rocks on the river we jumped

into off the rope-swing

the day I concussed myself so badly I though t I'd

die in my sleep

You didn't notice the ver r ti

go

The world is so wide, It seems so wasteful

to stay in One spot for

so long

It seems so wasteful to stay with someone

so terrible so long, but that never stopped me

I wish you were a crumb of who I made

you out to be.

I wish, you well, and I hope I never hear

from you again

I'm seeing someone new, and I realized the other day,

You'll never get to see this room

He has already inspected all my trinkets

Made peace with my sleeptalking

and snoring

and stroked the sun-bleached shell

while people-watching from the window

He holds the door and asks me to define my

vocabulary

Not as as test, but in curiosity

I don't cry much anymore, or nervously check for

a response

I'm thinking about all these places I'll visit,

and there

are new locations on the list:

Lake towns and mini-cities south of

Boston

Nashville, Nantucket, and Big Bear

I'm not thinking about your shitty city in the

suburb outside Vegas

When I think about you now, I feel sorry

for you (for me):

You'll be the same all you life, and

you're happy like that.

so terrible so

long

He asked me Saturday if I was different for my two

year's experience

I sighed pure delight

when I told him I wasn't a teenager

anymore

[it meant more than numbers]

I told him about the graveyard and a girl named

Abby

Little tokens of time spent and far from

me now

I told him about who I was when I

arrived and what happened

next

Window turtle watches me through another therapy

session

Watches me paint my nails and put my hair

up to sleep

I hope that whoever's grandma possesses it

is proud

Sometimes, when I come back in the mid-afternoon, I

realize I did not raise my blind

When I do window turtle is waiting there,

tanning like a real jersey girl

I think often now of all the girls I used to be

and I want to hold each one of them like water in my

hands, pretend

to understand their pain to the fullest capacity

I concede that I cannot

turn back the clock on days with my head

in the sand

Still, she reminds me of how far I have

come and the millenia still left

And as her oakshell bleaches a peachy taupe

she guards the windowsill from

spiders and clowns

I see in my mind how she looked on

shiny white paint of my childhood

bedroom dusting

Or the one I could barely leave where the

webbed windows stayed shut

places I never have to be again [this,

a gift]

I think maybe, I will never feel so low again

I think I could swim through anything