I want to tell you everything.
I want to be vulnerable ala Brenee Brown
I want to cure my toxic masculinity
By embracing my “feminity”
And exposing trauma so deep you can drown.

After all, you have the degrees
A veritable mistress of butterflied psyches
Schooled in pin boards and dichtomies
joined on the patriarchy.
Motherhood meets mastery and empathy.
Listening without judgement
While leaving me to a jury of my own peers,
Erected egotic edifices eroded by the winds
Blowing through cryptic crossroads
that challenge me to slay my father.

Be my therapist.
I want to tell you everything.
Let me cry into your arms.
And hold me with the strength
that I will never know.

I love golden showers
and I have a vested interest
in seeing the kink normalized.
So, I will write a reflexive ode to it
and sing its praises.

Zeus started it.
He used golden showers
to impregnate
a buried woman.

Think about that.
Think about how that’s stood the test of time.
Then, think of that heavenly ambrosia,
that stuff of legends,
gunneling down your partner -
painting their marbled torso,
etching abs and curves,
sliding downward with
a pungent warmth.

Think about what it is like
to kneel at the feet
of your god or goddess
and receive.

Zeus started it.
Golden showers,
Preserved in folk tales
of the people who
perfected the orgy
and were idolized by Germans.

You remind me of my mother
who planted long rows of delicate flowers,
using only her hands and her coping mechanisms.
Every hole troweled with the fury of promises yet fulfilled
and seeds sown with deliberate, calloused hands.

She too could make anything grow.
No matter how hard the soil.
How acidic the water.
How unbalanced the bases.
She possessed an aspect of Gaia.
for she could bring new life to barren soil.

She had a greenhouse
lush with strange fauna
not fit for our respective climate.
She conserved an orchid.
Her mists fell like tears
and the stubborn bulbs flourished.

You remind of my mother
For you make me grow no matter what the climate
Even in the frigid months
When other flowers perish
I am shaped by your bell jar
Safe in possessive glass.

I plot my course by three stars:
Charlotte,
Edison,
and Alexandra.

Charlotte oscillates
With the energy of a frozen heaven.
Her hair, a weave of dust
Between my outstretched sextant fingers.
She slyly winks with a dark humour.

Edison is the sun.
His warmth creates worlds.
He bathes those who surround him
In compassion
And the wisdom of the gods.

Alexandra is the smallest,
but she sings an old song.
She may be hidden by her siblings' shine.
Yet, everyone hears her whisper.
She speaks softly to Cassiopeia.
She lightly strokes Lyra.
We all dance to her pulse.

All three form the constellation, Potential.
I look to the heavens and I see a future unrealised.
I see a distant possibility.
I want to pluck them from the heavens.
I want to cradle them in my arms.
In each one, I see an aspect of the universe -
The mother who birthed them.

I pick my feet through the bones of my burned out house.
I step over a melted lamp, its fixture fused by the heat
As it juts from the wreckage like a survivor’s limb
The twisted metal vaguely resembles
A limp human hand.

I perilously walk across the untouched steel bar that reinforced the floor
I approach the island of surviving floorboards.
There’s a fiendish groan.
My foot cracks through a weak spot.

There is a pile of blackened rubble.
I lift each charred board.
I excavate the reams of smoked gypsum
I unearth a cracked throne
Still gleaming white beneath the soot.
It had fallen into the kitchen when the second floor collapsed.

I unearth the stone basement steps.
There’s exploded cans of stewed tomato,
Cooked onto the stone,
Like paint with plenty of texture.
I descend into what was supposed to be the family room
We were going to build it someday,
Have a lounge and a foosball table,
Maybe a bar and dartboard.
Whenever I had got around to finishing the basement.

In the corner, our trail bikes have melted together.
The water heater, an exploded cigar.
The unused exercise equipment, a jungle of fused metal.
All mutated mementos and refused requiems.

Everything is still wet.
From when the fire fighters perfunctorily
extinguished the smoking heap.
Long razed before they even got onto the scene.
By the time the alarms went off,
the home fires were burnt out.

I have learned many things.
Never live in the country if you want adequate fire coverage.
Always remember your wedding anniversary
Always buy her flowers
And never, ever marry a woman
With a history of arson.