This you don’t hate.

scars publications

Barbie My sister-in-law gave me a Midge doll set when she married my brother. Midge came complete with a wardrobe of designer floor-length dresses, with sequins, and tuille, and three-quarter-length gloves. But Midge, an older model, had short red hair styled like a housewife, not like Barbie’s, long and blond and flowing. And Midge could never sit in a chair because her plastic legs were rigid and couldn’t bend. For my sixth birthday I received a P.J. doll, one of Barbie’s friends. P.J.’s hair was blonde, like Barbie’s, but it was shorter. And here eyes were brown, like mine. Not eyes to dream of. Eyes like mine. When I finally got you, Barbie, I treated you like some sort of goddess, you with your disproportionate figure and perpetual smile. When you never eat, you can stay thin. You can always be happy. I took plastic kitchen shelf liner and caulking glue and lined a shoebox so you could have a bath tub. I taped a straw around the back of the tub so you could have jets and extra bubbles when you soaked. My father’s pool table was your lake; a second shoe box served as your speed boat. You took all your friends for boat rides along the green; Ken, the Donny and Marie dolls, P.J., even Midge. But I couldn’t be like you, I had to eat, and I could only stand on my toes for so long when you stood like a dancer perpetually. I couldn’t always smile. I was only a little girl. And I was cursed with brown eyes. What did you teach me? I pressed you next to Ken under your pink and white bed sheets, but your plastic bodies made a loud noise when you came together. Your legs never intertwined. Your smile never changed. And now, all grown up, I visit my parent’s house, and they tell me I have boxes of toys that could be thrown away. Kitchen accessories for the Barbie camper, beaded dresses I made myself. And I think: I could give these toys to my niece, so she could play, so she could learn. And then I decide: no, these dolls, these values, these memories, they belong sealed in cardboard boxes, where only time can take its toll.

here is me i have a secret i have an awful secret and i can’t tell anyone you see, my life would fall apart if anyone knew everyone thinks i’m some one different but here is me

issues you think i’m going to come running back to you again, do you, you think i need you so desperately that all you have to say is that you do care about me and that you don’t want me to leave your life and that you don’t want this to be goodbye, well, you told me good-bye once before and i took you back but now you’ve done it again and you think it’s all so easy and you think it’s all roses and candy and i’m not going back to you and what you did isn’t good for me and i know i sound like a psychai- trist now but you have some issues you need to deal with and i can’t be your counselor; i need someone to counsel me and if you need help you can’t help me, and i’ve figured that much out: you can’t help me

loved you the most I heard last week that you died. I called your office to ask you a question and the receptionist had to tell me. Of course I didn’t hear it from your family. How would they know to call me? They, who don’t even know my last name ans think I was a heathen and no good for you. They, tied to you by blood, never knew I wished for that tie to you too. They never knew I put you on a pedastal. They never knew I made you my god. I went to your funeral today. I wore a veil over the brim of my hat and stayed in the back while they lowered your casket into the ground. When everyone was at your gravesite the minister talked about the ones you left behind: your parents, your brother, your sister. What he didn’t know was that you left me behind too. The one that loved you the most. I knew I could never have you in my life. But I needed to know you were alive, so I could go on living. And the minister spoke of how your family would miss you. And I thought, what about me. What do I do with nothing to love.

more whiskey sours i need more more money, more orgasms more clothes, more cigarettes more whiskey sours, more heroin more love

run faster why me why do I keep doing this to myself why do I keep coming back I beg for attention and I don’t know how to stop and I don’t know how to be alone so I keep giving you one more chance to make it perfect one more chance to save the damsel but I’m not a damsel and I’m not being rescued and I’m not feeling any better because even though I hate you I’ll never let go so you’ll just have to run faster

never did the same we’ve put each other through hell, i know we’ve tried each other’s patience we’ve goaded each other on we’ve pissed each other off we’ve jerked each other around but i’ve noticed two things, one is that whenever you were unhappy i turned on the charm, i tried to make your day, i tried to make you laugh, and the other thing that i noticed is that you never did the same for me

russians at a garage sale at our annual garage sale this year all these old couples came walking by they were from the russian neighborhood they could barely speak english they would pick up an iron. “how much?” “four dollars.” “fifty cents?” “no.” it was a warm indian summer day we were all clad in shorts and sunglasses they would point at the iron, a toaster, a blender. “all for a dollar?” “no.” and all the old couples wore raincoats and scarves wrapped around their heads they would pick up a wine glass. “how much?” “twenty-five cents.” “how about ten?”

see you crawl come on, boy i want to see you come crawling back not because i want you here but because i want to see you crawl

shame on me you are stubborn, moody, angry and hateful you want to hate and you want to hate me and i keep thinking that you couldn’t even fuck your way out of a card- board box, you ass-hole but i still tried, i wanted to make it work with us and the highs were too high but the lows were too low and i’ve tried, i’ve worked and i’ve slaved for you and i wanted to know this couldn’t fail but once again you’ve proved me wrong fool me once and shame on you, fool me twice and shame on me

self-destructive i’ve been self-destructive before and you liked me then maybe i should go back go back to those days when it didn’t matter who i was with why would it matter unless it was you?

sorry flowers i bet you think a box of candy is all you need to make everything better and you’d still say i need to lose some weight, sure, feed me candy, okay. i love “apology candy” as much as i love “sorry flowers” and people at the office keep saying i must be a great girlfriend because i get flowers at the office but then i tell them that they are “sorry flowers” and that the worst kind of flowers are “sorry flowers” because you’d rather have no flowers if it meant that you two were happy all the time. and no one understands what you’re talking about. and neither do you. so good-bye.

the men at the construction site a woman told me that scientists did an experiment where a woman first walked past a construction site with her head down no one bothered her, no one noticed her everyone at the site left her alone then, later in the day, she walked past again in the same outfit, with the same stride but this time she walked with her head up, more confidently and that’s when she got the calls, the whistles from the men at the construction site and you tell me it’s not deliberate and you tell me it’s not an effort to keep women in their place

this halloween this halloween i got a costume together i wore a black page-boy wig, a vinyl dress and matching vinyl boots it was strange for me i’m not such an outgoing person and every time i was left alone at a bar someone would hit on me usually someone ugly but i didn’t tell them to leave me alone: i gave them a fake name, a fake number and looking back, what made the difference was not wearing the revealing clothes but wearing a wig, changing my identity and it’s not that i’d do it again but i must admit i really like being someone else just for a little while

the measuring scale Here’s an addition for your degrading terminology of women list. In the construction field they (men) have devised another form of measurement. When something is being lowered or fitted into place they will often refer to an inch or so as: up or down about a cunt hair. They have gone so far as to determine that blonde pubic hair is the smallest increment and at the other end of the measuring scale is black pubic hair. - Pam, via the internet why don’t you dissect me, take every single part of me and equate it with power tools, sports and violence? bang me, screw me, nail me, hammer me, bag me, pump me. shoot it in me. maybe you can even score. if we’re talking about measuring scales, what about the scale that defines the way you treat us: on one end is the minor stuff, calling us “baby” and “sugar,” whistling as we walk by, but then move along the scale, get to the blonde jokes, yes, they’re so funny, then how about a pinch in the rear at the office, well, that’s harmless enough and while you’re at it, porn movies and magazines, what harm do they do, and hey, women have always worked at home, so you should have all the jobs and get the better pay anyway and since we’re just your pro- perty, fuck us whenever you want, i mean, hey, you’re doing it already in every other aspect of our repressed, oppressed lives so rape us, smack us around knock us down a flight of stairs that’s what we’re here for god, i don’t even know how to measure these things any more

the things warren says I know about this guy, he sucked his eyeball out with a shop-vac he went to the hospital brought the shop-vac with him he was okay, but they couldn’t put his eve back in: it was all mangled, and besides, it was covered in potato chips

This you don’t hate. From the picture window the snow drizzling down fell effortlessly, silently: I wondered if outside it was as quiet as it looked. The snow blanketed the grass, past the pier his father made last summer, out over the lake. Everything glowed in an untouched whiteness. No footprints yet. Just falling snow. From the couch I looked at the larger-than-life snowflakes fall, one after another, all gently gliding down to the ground. I could not look away. And you said: This is why I like winters. See, you hate winter in the city, but this, this you watch for hours and don’t get tired of. This makes you smile. This you don’t hate.

warren stories i heard this story about this fat woman who sat naked on a pork chop bone once and didn’t notice when it lodged itself among her folds of fat. years later, when she felt a sharp pain, and the doctors couldn’t figure out what it was, opened her up and found the pork chop, and realized that her skin just eventually grew over it.

who you tell your dreams to we were driving down the freeway you and me in the pick-up truck and your girfriend inbetween where you could move the gear shift and it would mean so much to you and you saw something that you thought was beautiful, and you said, “look at the lines, look at how it was made” and you were inspired by the beauty of an everyday object no one else noticed and your girlfriend, riding in the middle said “that’s him, people think he’s crazy” and i thought, “no, it just depends on who you tell your dreams to” but i couldn’t say it in the truck i wouldn’t say it

you feel more it’s like this: run your hand back and forth in a line parallel to the ground that’s the world you see it’s that line now raise your hand a few inches, maybe six above that line and run your hand back and forth and that is you you’re above it all you’re better than them all you can do more you succeed more you feel more and then, you see, you raise your hand a few inches, maybe six more above that line and run your hand back and forth and that is who you love and when you feel you’re above them all how will you find someone higher?

Copyright Janet Kuypers. All rights reserved. No material may be reprinted without express permission.

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