today, i am longing for a sweet ignorance that i have lost.
i saw my eyes in someone else's,
the innocence was sorely missed.
i wanted to go back
to all of my befores, make them pure again.
those seedy devils of my rottenness could somehow escape from me,
and i would be untainted, painfully naive.

before B ran naked from my bathroom, chased me outside and i threw up.
before E passed me that swollen joint and i thought i was a starving man when i smoked it.
before F stood posing in front of the mirror and i knew i would never have a dancer's body.
before O took my virginity in the pebble-sand and i fell asleep in my blood.
before R came in a plastic cup and told me it was wizard serum.
before E tried to squash her clit with a tweezer cause she thought she was popping her cherry.
before I learned men liked my tits and i held them with tape and two bras.
before W told me it was just like a lollipop and his was cherry flavored.
before A asked me to marry him in the hospital and i accepted.
before S rubbed my shoulders and told me i was much more beautiful than his wife.
before C laid me down and showed me what it was to make love.
before O did too much coke in the bathroom at that sweet sixteen and i had to learn how to drive.
before N spit on the wall and slammed the door behind him twice.
before T drank himself stupid and tried to touch me in the alley by the chelsea hotel.
before A showed me her menstruation, and it smelled like iron and shit.
before M called me a woman for the first time and made me chamomile tea
before I cashed in my bicycle for train tickets and stayed on your couch for a week, and you loved me.
before N gave me mushrooms and we were lovers in a cave, and ballroom dancers.
before A sang me leonard cohen by the lake and i kept trying to be suzanne.
before T stood me in front of the mirror and told me to watch everything he did to me.
before E poured chemicals in my bread and tried to make me eat it.
before D died in a car crash and i learned about grief.

i want to remember what it was to be delicate,
to never know the pain of brokenness, the
intangible disconnect of being human.
i wanted to write a poem
and dedicate it to the girl i was
before i was contaminated.

01/26/2008

Posted on 01/26/2008
Copyright © 2024 Lauren Singer