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maybe I wake up and he's standing over me, fingers inside my mouth, shoulder to shoulder, eyes clear and smiling/ and he's got his mouth on my appetite and I'm breathing in that stuff/ his stuff/ huh-huh/ huh-huh/ huh-huh/ soft whisper and I am remembering his touch/ and maybe he cries / or one tear wells up round the ring of his eye and I cry/ or we just sit and he lets me fall in love with him/ and he doesn't go away/ and he doesn't force me to go away/ and his smell stays on my skin even after I am rubbed raw I still know it deep inside me/ I remember country roads like this one/ remember the dips/ the crunch of sound as night moved into late/ late night/ country roads remind me of his tongue/ long and perfect and on me/ and my new lover tells me he doesn't think I need sex to survive/ need sex to survive/ need sex to survive/ and I want to tell him I feel like my body might rip open/ that my stomach might bust up if no-one touches me/ tell him I put my hands on myself so much that if I died the DA would know I killed myself cuz there'd be no other fingerprints anywhere near my body/ I need to tell you I've been raped/ and because I can't ever tell you that you'll go on thinking shit/ shit/ shit that isn't true I miss his mouth like I miss the cracking sounds of tree limbs near the river/ I miss the insides of his skinny wrists like I miss the sound of 11 PM on a Saturday night in the deep/ deep south/ face out the window/ stoned/ I miss his fingers like I miss the length of I-75/ I miss him like home that's how he comes to me at night/ that's why when I dream of him I wake up wet and choking/ why he's got his hands wrapped so tight round my throat that even if I wanted to call out his name/ or YES/ or NO/ he wouldn't let me/ I wouldn't try/ and it's why I still can't write about him/ why he is so crammed in round me that I can't move to get away/ I want to see him the way I get thrilled by a full moon/ the way I long to fall in love again/ for real this time/ that's how I know he's deep inside me still/ embedded in me still I want to uproot him now/ want my underwear back/ my writings/ my fingerprints/ I want them for me now/ so please/ please/ don't tell me who I am or who you think I am or how much sex you think I need in my life/ you don't know the hands that made fingerprints on me/ you've never seen those fingers/ they never tried to strangle you/ never aimed at marking you whole Ellen Hagan is a performance artist/writer and educator. She is currently working toward her MFA in creative writing at The New School University and works as a teaching artist with Community Word, an arts organization that places artists in underserved classrooms. A native of Kentucky, she received her BFA in theatre from the University of Kentucky, and recently performed her first one-woman show SKIN THIS last spring in their Studio Season. Ellen's credits include both classical and contemporary productions, and she has trained at both Goldsmiths College in London England and NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. |