I Want More

By Tracy Burkholder

In this lyric hybrid of memoir, poetry and image, Tracy Burkholder follows the trail of want through the pleading prayers of childhood to the ecstasy of a lush spring night to the frank exploration of an open relationship. I Want More is a map that expands beyond the realm of boy meets girl (and girl meets girl) into the internal and external geographies that make up the broad territory of our desires.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Summerbear Press
• Release date: Jul 1, 2019
• ISBN: 9781393983095

Tracy Burkholder

Tracy Burkholder is, among other things, a writer, photographer, and hospice massage therapist. Her writing has been published in numerous journals including PANK and The Cincinnati Review and her photography can be found on Instagram (t.a.burkholder). She lives in Portland, Oregon.

Book preview

Introit

The low-scooped neckline of the barista’s shirt revealed her skin and her skin had a story and the story was carved in black cursive ink from breast to breastbone.

I want more.

I wanted to stare, but didn’t.

I wanted to run her story under my fingers, my tongue. The outer curve of my lips. Or hold my ear to the rhythm of it.

Instead, she gave me a cup of coffee in exchange for a handful of soft dollar bills.

With each insufficient sip of street sweat and coffee dust her want moved in my direction.

I like your tattoo, I said. Soap bubble words, disintegrating in mid-air.

She continued to breathe without thinking of breathing. Without thinking of me at all. How could that be when that rise and fall looked so deliberate?

I stepped back into the world and the barista’s story became music. An afternoon symphony. Every note in sync.

Again and again, I thought about the declaration on her skin and how it was possible to say WANT and MORE. All day. Every day. For as long as your skin was skin.

Everyone who read English could know your perpetual urge.

And it wasn’t a hard, ugly secret.

It wasn’t hidden in code or written in invisible ink.

You could live like that. Who knew?

I. Via Cupio

(The Way of Want)

Conyngham, PA. 1975–1976

Watermarked

––––––––

It started in the blue-gray boat of the bedroom. I floated inside my curled, night body while my mother sat beside me watching for the usual signs: two fingers held to the side of my nose for please stay. One finger for you can go. Eyes closed. Sleep washing in. The mattress rose like a swell.

And so I moved from mother to dream without ever feeling alone, without ever having to say I needed anything.

The dream that night was not the first dream. But it was the only one that mattered. The dream, as old as water, coursed through me.

Ancient dream. Five-year-old girl.

Everything was water and the water moved in colors I didn’t have names for yet: Carnelian. Cerulean. Chartreuse.

My dream body was built from water the way my real body was, a fact my muscles and blood knew long before my brain (that small part of the brain not made of water).

I became the current and breathed water and swallowed color.

Until lung became tongue.

And mother was night.

And go was stay.

The dream didn’t leave when I woke up, the way water never leaves. It stuck to me all day

and the next 

and next

and next.

A dream as long as a life. Maybe longer.

The dream that matters. The one that never disappears.

Dappled

Once, in the lake behind the house, a friend made a boa out of algae while I swept sticky green threads from my path like cobwebs.

Once, in the middle of the creek between the lake and the house, a stone turned into a turtle and I let it carry me to safety.

Once, the yellow-green light came through the trees just beyond the house and the giant skunk plants unfurled from the mud. Sun and shadow rippled over the big-as-me leaves.

And then I felt dapple.

And how the earth was old, my place in it small.

Water, mud and forest.

Man-made lake, nature-made creek, god-born woods.

My small body stood dressed in wet green and wet ground. I licked my forearm and tasted salt.

Return

Remember when babysitters would say things like, I’ve got mac and cheese for you tonight if you want it, and wouldn’t care where you played all afternoon, somewhere close because far was nothing but empty?

Remember how we worked our way through water, mud and forest until we stood at the edge of my driveway giddy with magic?

Can you come back after dinner? I asked and before running down the block to your house you said of course.

Instead of going inside, I returned to my