And I'll close with this poem for my husband
that came from a first-line that I really said to him.
And you have to imagine that I know I go out on the road
and do these readings and have this wonderful time,
and he sees all these pictures, and I'm dressed up.
And then when I come home, I just
melt into the writer, the poet, which
is a different person than the performer.
And so yeah.
"Love Poem with Apologies for My Appearance."
Sometimes, I think you get the worst of me--
the much-loved loose forest-green sweatpants,
the long bra-less days, hair knotted and uncivilized,
a shadowed brow where the devilish thoughts
do their hoofed dance on the brain.
I'd like to say this means I love
you, the stained white cotton T-shirt, the tears, pistachio
shells, the mess of orange peels on my desk.
But it's different than that.
I move in this house with you, the way
I move in my mind, unencumbered by beauty's cage.
I do like I do in the tall grass, more animal-me than much
else.
I'm wrong.
It is that I love you, but it's more
that when you say it back, lights out, a cold wind
through curtains, for maybe the first time in my life,
I believe it.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]