Nothing Less - flipside B - Barbara LM Handley

Nothing Less

My friends ask me why I'm doing this. One,
in particular, wants to know
what I'm getting out of it.
She wants to know why I wait, why
I put any energy at all into you.

She thinks you're bad for me
and she only knows about the gin
and your wishy-washy half-assed game of
I-don't-want-what-I-want-that-I-no-longer-believe-I-can-have-and-it's-you-but-please-don't-go.

She doesn't know
about the scars on your arms or that
you opened your flesh in front of me or that
I helped stop the blood.
She doesn't know that
you wanted to die in my arms
or that you wanted to cut me
and I very nearly said
yes.

She thinks I'm too afraid
to want anything better than you,
and she tells me so,
cutting me off at the ankles and
grinding you into glass powder.

Better than you?
You are the only person I've ever known who
sees what I see. When I stood
in front of the Maxfield Parrish and reached out
to touch the canvas, to caress the footprints of the gods, I knew
you would understand when I told you. Had you been there,
you would have felt it, too.
I don't need to explain myself
to you because you see me.

There may be
something better, but it is something
else, and I have no interest in
else.

God,
you are so twisted up by your fear and guilt. It hurts
to think you may have looked at me as

only a pity fuck.
I'm worthy of more than that.
It pierces me
through my most tender vulnerabilities.
If you really, really want to hurt me, if you want to blast me to
nothing but a smoking shell,
this is where you can do it.

Remind me
that no one has loved me,
or will ever love me,
because of joyful wanting
or because of anything wonderful or
even just nice about me.

Remind me
that I'm so defective and damaged
that the best I can do
is motivate people to grudgingly give what they don't want to give
out of pity and guilt.

Remind me
that I'm too intense, too tall, too fat, too ugly,
to be attractive to anyone, let alone
worthy of any genuine
liking or love.

Remind me
that I'm so small as to be almost
nothing at all.

I am human and most likely
blind to much of what I do. Forgive me,
for the ways in which I fail, if I fail
to hold you gently and tenderly enough, if
I speak from my own need instead of
to your highest good.

I don't
want to lead you and I don't
want to carry you. I want
to walk alongside you and hold your hand through the rough spots while you find your way.

I do this
because I must. Because I choose it. Because
I choose you and because
I'm getting nothing less than life itself...
the thing which wills and does not stop.

2005

Thoughts and Comments

I performed this piece at the January Poetry Slam in Eugene.