Unlaced

i learned how to tie my shoes when i was five and i was
huddled in my best friend’s bedroom, two houses down and across the street from my house,
each of us knew how  to do half the job.
we didn’t plan it that way, it just happened when they were trying to teach us the whole thing.
i went first, and showed her how to “Cross, tuck, pull tightly”
she showed me “make a loop, wrap it around and pull it through.” 
we practiced together all day until we could both do it.  
not too long after that, she moved away, and wasn’t two houses down and across the street 
the first street i was allowed to cross alone
anymore.
sometimes we still call or text, once in a while we get together.
there are some things your friends teach you that you don’t forget.

and so some forty years after i learned from my best friend how to tie my shoes,
i am hearing my friends tell me to Take Up Space.
i think they are trying to teach me how,
because they tell me things like i have a right to exist and that it is okay to be angry?
they tell me that they think i have a voice and that they want to hear what i am saying.
i am still looking to see who they are talking about, because i am pretty sure it can’t be me.

Nobody ever taught me how to write a poem. 
Teachers told me 
THIS IS A POEM
Sonnet
Haiku
Limerick
and
THIS IS HOW THE PIECES FIT TOGETHER
Fourteen lines, ten syllables, these are your choices for rhymes
Three lines, seventeen syllables, 5-7-5
Five lines, three long, two short, make us laugh and stay the fuck away from Nantucket.  

Now write.

Someone  shows you the poet’s tools and tells you about meter and metaphor. 
There are technical words like prosody and synecdoche.
Words like antithesis slither across the page and onomatopoeia marches on by. 

And then they carve all the fun away.
You don’t learn to throw the words on the poetry wheel and let them spin while you mold them carefully
Feeling their texture and their meaning in your hands
While you are inhaling their scent and something incredible takes shape.
And that thing, your incredible thing will be set to dry, and when it has rested and dried
You will go back and finish it with the final flourishes of glaze until it is just right. 

They tell you who-what-when-where-why-how-there are rules.

I am sitting here in this broken down body that doesn’t do what I want it to anymore, 
Remembering the power words had the night a lover watched me dance 
And when I stopped to catch my breath and drink the ice cold water spraying from the fountain
He whispered to me “I love to watch you move. You look like you’re at home in your body.” 
He devoured  me with his eyes the way I gulped down  the water. 
In one moment I understood how words can take up space just like a body.
Sometimes my poetry has feet and those feet can kick or stomp or dance.
My feet might wear sneakers that light up
or fuzzy socks, or 
Sometimes they will be bare naked, dirty and ragged,
With or without glittering toenail polish.
Sometimes they will wear shoes that are too big
or fancy shoes out of season
but not the ill fitting high heels  that someone else insists are the right ones for the occasion.
When other people read my words, those feet might wear uncomfortable shoes that cause blisters, and calluses. 

i learned to tie my shoes and I learned to walk in high heels.  High heels that I wore because someone else said I was supposed to wear them. 

Now is the time for me to go barefoot. 

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