Back to Basics

It’s one of those days where you open your email that
you haven’t checked in too-long, and there is a new
one from a "SteveandRenee(your married last name)" sending you
pictures of your beautiful child, and
all you can think is, "Oh, how very quaint and sweet…
Do You Think I Could Get A Divorce Now?"

I came home from work and stripped – shoes, work clothes,
jewelry.

All of it.
I never take off my jewelry.

Today I just need to be rid of it – I want to be the girl that doesn’t love
(…stars) (necklace), doesn’t have a drinking problem (ring), doesn’t
have a dead grandmother (family heirloom ring), was never married
(diamond earrings), doesn’t work.

If I could I’d strip off the stretch marks; I was never fat, never had a child,
I’d erase the scars to never have been abused, or loved.
I’d wipe clean any place that a man ever laid a kiss, or a soft touch.
I’d scratch off the tattoos, the beauty marks, the wrinkles if I could.

Today I have this carnal desire to return to the simplicicty of it all –
to swing with monkeys and sprawl naked on a rock and feel the warm
sun on my skin, the cool breeze on my bare back.

I’ll walk with bare feet and no intentions, wild hair swinging in the wind.

I’ll have no name, no face.
The soft dirt of the earth will be my home and the cloud my dreams.

Today, I want only to exist in simplicity, and find joy in the act of being alive.

-V.