‘I’m no fucking "bargain"’

Mostly because I don't think anyone expected it of me, I'm posting a poem that I wrote. But first, some revealing words of wisdom from Edna St. Vincent Millay: "A person who publishes a book appears willfully in public with his pants down."

---

I'm no fucking bargain.

I'm moody,
and sad, a lot of the time.
I'm demanding, and excruciatingly hopeful,
and blind to things that later whack me in the head,
and then I have the audacity to be surprised by them,
as if they weren't there all along.
As if I shouldn't have known better.
As if, half the time, someone whom I trusted
hadn't actually told me--
"Pay attention to this,
dumb ass!"

I'm loving, and generous.
But my love, and my gifts,
come with a price.
It's not things that I want--
not promises,
not presents.
I want love,
and presence.
Well, that’s bullshit,
because I want the presents, too,
but the 'being here'
is the most important,
the only important,
the only thing
that really matters.
And if I've had to ask...
you're so much too late
that you
just don't get it,
do you?,
and so why are you reading this,
anyway?

I'm petty
and impatient
and selfish
and either petulant
or voluminously chatty,
to the point of annoying even myself.

I have a peculiar sense of my own importance
relative to the rest of the world,
particularly my own little chunk
of the rest of the world.
Sometimes that sense makes me out to be
very small and insignificant,
while sometimes--
and at odd times--
it leaves me walking in shoes
that I couldn't truly hope to fill.

I'm a bitch...
and all the rest of those things
that Meredith Brooks said
we're supposed to aspire to be.

And I'm a child.
I cry easily,
and it takes a lot to make me laugh hard.
But when I do,
you know it,
cause it's the kind of laugh
that other people feel.

I'm better at caring for other people
and things
than I am at caring for myself,
although I'm learning
--or remembering?
in some age-old, repressed-it-for-too-long-now
kind of way?--
how to deal with myself again,
the everyday
taking care of myself
so nobody else
thinks they have to,
so nobody else
dares to,
so nobody else
would ever think
that I can't.
Even though I'm faking it
more than I'm making it,
that's good enough
for now.

So I'm a child,
and I'm older than my years, wise
and sad.
I'm moody,
but I'm also,
in my own head,
at least,
and that's where this really matters,
on the whole,
happier and more together
than I've ever been
before.
I'm a bitch,
but I'm loving
and I'm more physical
than I understand.
But wasn't it time
that I took tenancy
in this body
for which I'd paid rent,
my whole life
before?

I'm no fucking bargain.
I'm not easy--
as a friend
or a lover,
as a child
or a sister,
as a woman
or a writer.

I never said I would be.

Am I worth it?

If you don't think that I am
then this
was not
for you.

---

for Johnnie