This is a spoken word poem that I wrote for myself to perform at my Voice and Diction final. Costume included: white button up, black apron, and black tie. And I'm sure I wore pants.
To all the people to whom I lied to make this evening possible:
I’m sorry
I quit.
When I get like this, it’s like there’s no stopping me
When I get like this it’s like the great monster of “RAWR! COMMITMENT!”
Tears open my left clavicle and shouts: There’s just some things you
don’t talk about!
Well, fuck that.
The sanctity of marriage be damned
when a grandma can’t bring herself to leave a grandpa
for molesting a daughter
who would eventually become my mother
whom my father never kept a promise to,
moved on to thicker,
younger
pastures
and forgot to leave the housekeeper out of it….
And you wonder why I don’t believe in marriage.
Me
Who’s sitting on a toilet wondering why you didn’t call me like you
said you would
Because your phone died
And because after 2 years you still don’t know my number by heart
My number that is
My voice at the other end
My voice and so much more
My voice, which I force to speak upon the swamp thing that festers
beneath my clavicle
D’you hear me!?
I quit!
I quit the world that must not see
Must not know
How I am broken
Or sealed
Or hurting
Or hiding the fact that I didn’t go into either of my jobs tonight
Though I was called.
Instead I sat on my couch
Like a slob and a quitter
But how can I quit
When recession is advertised in every window in every shop that offers
free meals to kids on Sundays
I work two jobs
And school full time
Social life?
Are you alive?
Free time equals 30 minutes a week during which I must shave my legs
So don’t wait up for me at the coffee shop
Because I have to home brew now
No quick stop at a friend’s
No stroll down to the west end of the street where the sun sets in all
its glory
And orange pearlescence over the lazy transverse mountain range
And you see - I don’t even know what that means
Don’t even see the color orange in the sky because I have forgotten
What the sunset can mean to a person who has forgotten
That the most beautiful things in life
Are usually free.
Me
Who presides over her student-sized checkbook
Which looks a lot more like a debt-book
And begs about as much as my roommate’s cat for attention.
Me
Who slips between skins
Like a chameleon through colors
Though with considerably more effort
I step out of the schmoozer and into a costume that says
“Hi, I touch your dirty plates
I scrape your half eaten rack of ribs into the trash can
I drop your extra ramekin of ranch onto the tile floor
I watch it shatter into fourteen pieces that Jose picks up for me
Because the noise has just made me dumb”
But that isn’t what consciously passes through your mind when we talk
It is what isn’t said
But resounds loudly in my ears.
I want to befriend you; you’d give me more money, wouldn’t you?
Me
Who delivers your drinks effortlessly to your table
Spilling only on my own hands
Which are still wet and I
PRETEND
is normal
so nobody notices that my apron is darker in some places
So nobody notices that I tremble only slightly
when the whole of me screams and twists from the inside out
To walk out that door
And into the orange glow of fading light
And fading warmth
And fading promises…
And I quit.
Quit festering. Quit pestering. Quit with the dishes with the PRETENSES
And I quit this “RAWR COMMITMENT!”
And I quit this.. (throws necktie)
and I quit this… (throws apron)
and I quit ‘When I get like this”
and this is the point where I am reminded by Debra that stress is
released 3 ways
Crying
Laughter
And orgasm
And speaking of which... (exits)
