An epiphany If you’re not feeling nice, why act nicely? It just gives people the wrong impression. I like this. table of lamps and candles I’ve been taught something quite different from this idea. It’s only dawning on me now how niceness can distort. Being civil and considerate, acting with kindness – I get. There’s something clean and mutually respectful about those choices in behaviour. Nice, though, when you’re not feeling it. When you examine the results, they’re never good. In a year-old effort to consciously rid my behaviour of anything that even hints at passive aggression I’ve arrived here. This week alone I’ve observed myself behaving nicely because I was bored in a conversation, another time nice because I was nervous. Another time nice because I was intimidated and lost my opinion so therefore my real voice. Curious, I tried several times to be nice as an expression of … niceness, but this always turned into an act of kindness. Nice is a default for me, then. Perhaps nice is also a smokescreen. In any case, it has become apparent that I hide behind my niceness, which is rude. Last Bell, 2016 My default niceness also gives others the impression that I am nice. Ew. Like mezzo piano. 30% grey. A picket fence. A hallmark card. My poetry isn’t nice. I need to re-think my behaviour. More Bitch. I’ve denied you good purchase longtime to my detriment your hard instinct for closure your abrupt, disruptive your not-nice. Witch. I can feel you inside my belly, Drumming your Know. Your Know Drum more becomes the weft and warp of my song. More. More. Crone. You grip my neck like the carnivore you are twist it in the shake that will break my love for the past for sentiment for soft truths. Those won’t do. These new truths are hard. these blades samurai-sharp this warning bell held aloft, ready I grip the rim, white-knuckled. Skin. The outer me erupts in antagonized boils, swell to seep weeping Skin. My containment. The outer package of muse love, milf-love, tantalize, mythologize my untouchable, touchable skin. Skin as articulate now as it wasn’t then, so tuned when I was younger to a man’s finger to his hands, his thrust Only then would it speak only then could I hear it. Now it names Sunlight the brush and cover of hair the shocking envelope of lake water a draft of air, a blanket my Crone skin hears sound feels ache knows exuberance craves beauty yearns for peace. Crone. You call me home hard. klm 19 April 2016/March 2017 Share this:PrintEmailFacebookTwitterLinkedInPinterestRedditTumblrLike this:Like Loading...