Wretched Splendor

I want a night out.  I want to go out and listen to music and drink too much and kiss too many people and crawl home with my dress torn and my lipstick smeared and I don't give a damn who sees me fall out of the cab and onto my front lawn at 2 in the morning or 7:30 in the morning while the school buses are passing by and the dads are throwing their briefcases onto their front seat for their long commute into the city; their wives staring at them stupidly from the kitchen window.  I don't care if they see me there; face down in the damp grass, the sprinklers cleansing me of the night; my dress hiked up above my hips, one side of my panties stuck in the crack of my ass.  I want to crawl on all fours across my lawn and scrape my knees on the sidewalk as I try to lift myself up my front steps and open the door, throwing myself across the threshold of the entrance; collapsing there half in and half out of that life out there and this life in here. 

I hope my bloody knees stain the carpet in this front room and I hope the scars are as magnigicent and as huge as all the life out there that I've spent in here.

I want to lay there all day until the sun moves its way across the length of my house and I find myself in the shadows again.  Then, I want get up like I was never down and wash the old night off of me; get dressed again for right now.  I want to open my front door and walk smoothly down my sidewalk into an awaiting cab.  I'll sneak off into this night and take as many lovers as will have me before there are no takers at all.  I want to be wretched and dirty and filthy and vile  and radiant and magnificent and on fire and I want to do it as much and for as long as this old body can stand.