Anhedonic Woman

I never want to suffer for love. I never want to put on a red dress

and have you tell me how incredible I look. Give me only a companion,

so I don’t have to bother with the stink of sex,

or crash through strange bedrooms and wake up naked

in bathtubs in the middle of the night with stupid blue lights

shining in my eyes. Give me stiff straight hair, caught in a bubble

of hairspray, so it never blows in the wind but remains like

a trapezoid. Give me sachets so the drawers always smell of stale

decapitated roses. Give me the evillest wood-backed chair,

one that forces my body ramrod straight

like a medieval torture device. I want the itchiest sweater,

one that makes me scratch like mad. To hell with soft runny cheeses,

oozing chocolate cakes, and moisturizing creams; give me hard

cheeses, Pisco sours, and flaking skin. To hell with corded muscles,

long flax hair, and screaming children, I want the world trussed

inside cabinets and boxes, pristine and preserved

like a Joseph Cornell miniature, not a world where everything

is jammed up against everything else like flotsam in the sea.

I don’t want the howl of a wolf or the pulsing luminescence of the moon.

I want Pluto, cold and still. I want to be submerged in the Underworld

where it’s dark and cool, where I can put on my night vision goggles.

I want you to tell me I look like a scarecrow. I want to frighten

all the birds away in a field that is the absence of field. I never want

to touch you at night but to lie still and stiff beside you and listen

to your breathing and know that I’m a zombie and I can’t touch you.

I want to hold back and hold back and hold back until I’m sick inside

and withered like an old leather shoe. I want to cut my food into tiny

morsels and only eat a crumb at a time until my body shrinks to nil.

I want the stars. They ask for nothing and give nothing in return.