Secrets of the Self – becoming a warrior by Alysse Aallyn

The Lovers

My husband and I frequently refer to each other as our “cuttle bone/cuddlebone.” We keep each other’s warrior blades sharp. When trying to explain how I became a warrior, deepest emotional relationships we form by choice paint a picture of a quest for support and validation. My coed boarding school had rigid social requirements of dating and communicating – there was a “Boys End” and a “Girls End” and every evening representatives from each side would meet in “Central” and exchange baskets of messages. At Girls’ End these messages (called “KOBS” or “Kindness of Bearer”) were stored in a stocking hung beside the recipient’s mirror. This was our earliest form of flirting! One lover I chose because his KOBS were beautiful – always expressed as free-floating poetry – another because he was imaginative and ambitious – a third because he was forceful and honest. It was how these boys came alive on the page that was significant to me.
My last boyfriend at that school – whom I was to marry eleven years later – we are still married to this day – presented himself as an ideal combination of all of these, plus he was gorgeously beautiful. But before we could come together, many dragons needed to be killed.

Leaving the Coven

A craven of cronies stood
Between us & God –
God demands clones
God hated short skirts.

A damnation of judges
Stood between us &
Knowledge; truth exists
Only in service.

A clowder of cretins
Stood between us &
Art: “Don’t be disturbing”
“Never trust instincts.”

From the depths of
This oubliette
You drank the koolaid
Guaranteeing survival

Cherishing passions that
One day would rescue me –
So I could grow up
And write you this poem.