Rescue Me

You say you truly know I will have the same wedding you did.
We are poets,
you believe in fairytales, and my prince will rescue me, too,
you’re so sorry he wasn’t my matched groomsman.

I say, 51% of college educated women don’t get married until 30, if at all,
At least not conventionally,
my lack of interest does not make your hetero-normativity more or less valid.

You see, I was a child bride.
I married the planks I stand on,
when this ship rocks, if I fall,
I will drink the ocean dry -
it’s only made up of my tears after all.

My father walked me down the aisle,
red carpet drying backstage at the Metropolitan Opera House,
gave me away to Bizet as Carmen’s vows poured out of my babe’s mouth.
We sold my heart for thirty-dollar an hour voice lessons
and a dream so far away it hurt -
I danced with six other little girls that night,
ta ra ta ta ra ta ta ta ta

When I left Bizet’s house for the love of Verdi,
he watched me fold sorrow into meringues as we baked for the neighbor’s potluck,
we paced grooves in my mother’s rug waiting for Julliard’s answer -
when they said, yes, full scholarship,
my mother said:

Go west!
Go west and be free,
you are more than a mezzo-soprano,
Ginsberg is in your bones.
Go claim him.

And then, I met you, my sun and sky,
and you sang with me in predawn bonfires
as I burned the corsets I came from.

I don’t know how you missed the tower I was locked in.

It's not that I don't believe in fairy-tales,
it's just that Perrault and Grimm littered my bedroom floor.
I've seen dozens of Cinderfellas and Sleeping Beauty's merely waste away.

I waited so long for a living lover’s kiss,
and it splashed on my lips in my first wet dream -
I awoke to fiery orgasm, punched my fist through glass,
licked the poisoned apple wounds on my palms,
and swallowed that damn spindle whole.
With the shards of my coffin,
I cut off my hair,
and climbed down the tower to find the witch that put me in it.

She wasn’t there.
She had never been there,
only my own reflection in the pond beneath the thorns.

But you,
you must’ve had a witch at your wedding,
she threw you to rosebushes of blind ideology;
I remember when I tried to claim my bouquet with many other men,
you held me firm.
Said I was better off without it.
It wouldn't save me.

So, open your ears to see me better, princess.

I want you in your castle,
in the heart of your prince.
I want you to keep your kingdom under locks of love
and keys of kisses,
and yes, you should rejoice in every moment you have with him,
and relish those baby cheeks when they get here.

I hold mankind’s heart in the spell of Schubert’s song -
I’m a reigning queen in my own right,
the Queen of the Night,
and I have no intention
of sullying my father’s good name
for a man who cannot live up to Wagner,
for anyone who cannot love my voice as Mozart does.

I will never be lonely.
I've got the sea.