I wake to itchy eyelids made of lead,
the soft gray sheets encasing,
eerily fingerlike with their grip,
the warm curvature of the mattress a sinister sea of quicksand,
and when I force my tired feet to the cold, rigid floor,
I slip into the day like a starched straight jacket,
every obligation a crushing compression,
each movement a quickening constriction,
sucking the pyrrhic air out of my chest cavity,
squeezing at my brittle bones
I am the word shatter,
spidering cracks creeping to the edges,
a fragile soul covered in brittle bone and tender flesh,
as if one wrong move and I might become something else entirely
my arms twist and stretch toward something,
someone,
and just when I feel the promise of weight upon my upturned palms,
it all slips away like a ghost at daybreak,
and I am left here exposed,
alone
someone once told me the world shines shit and calls it gold, and they were right;
it makes you believe there’s another kind of life,
one that’s not so dangerous, fleshy,
full of absence so painful it takes your breath away and leaves you hollow, an exuviae,
a shadow of your almost self
I am the noise a glass makes when you run a finger along the rim,
the one that causes piercing pain,
the one that some can’t hear,
yet, I’m here
you can live your whole life dancing with the idea of mortality,
knowing that one day will be the last day,
and still never really know what that means
what does it all mean?
what happens if I am no longer this woman,
waiting to be loved in the way I let define me?
~Painting is Molting by Ben M. Arthur
holding my hand during the sad parts,
a quick kiss while we shuffle around one another making dinner,
the graze of your finger on the back of my neck as you pass by,
your knees tucked tightly behind mine
and your arms enveloping me;
a little bit of expected,
in a time when the world is feeling
more unpredictable than ever
the rains come again,
tap-tapping at the window panes,
a symphony out-of-sync,
not unlike the fearful beating of her own heart
a familiar, creeping terror rises from a place beyond thoughts,
some innermost trap door flying open,
her instinct to leap upon and lean against it with all her might,
to padlock it shut,
but that energy has long ago evaporated
so she murmurs in a rhythm,
uttering age-old phrases that spin-cycle in her mind,
an attempt at talking herself off an unrevealed ledge,
fear pumping off her in virulent, toxic fumes
she isn’t herself,
hasn’t been for a long while;
her very smell like that of imminent winter,
brittle and airless with the heavy inertia of time
why has no one noticed?
all my life I’ve wondered what’s inside of me,
what I’m really made of
is it all hope-driven gears, creak-cranking,
squeaky with cynical grease?
or is it luminous rays of wonder and awe,
eyes, blinking and seeking love, pure and true?
is it all smoke, a fevered kiln of passing time,
age-dried straw, a mess of flaking atrophy?
or is it a not-so-flash flood, raging, rising,
the result of an aching, beating heart?
is it all waves of water and crackling fire,
opposing forces, one constantly quenching the other?
or do I simply burn for all that I am not,
for all I do not have?
-artwork by my daughter
as the weight incrementally increased,
she folded her desire in half,
then in half again,
and again,
until she could barely feel it at all,
tucking it into that hidden corner of her heart,
a minuscule origami equal in measure to her worth
amidst the chaos,
amidst all I don’t know,
all that isn’t mine to maneuver,
all that is out of my reach,
I know this familiar misery,
this misery that’s all mine
and I can make as much as I want
they had all gathered to celebrate,
a room full of family from near and far,
her longing to see them equal in measure to the anxiety she felt in a crowded room,
one full of prickly expectation
she tried so hard to be the mirror others expected her to be,
but her smile was like a wound that had thickened as it healed,
nothing but rough, numb skin where nerve endings once existed
I recalculate
convince myself
I am cotton candy
sugar and air
but sooner or later
in the inevitable heat
I become a damp wad
of weeping pinky-red
as we sit in the quiet,
I wonder,
is enough of me still located here?
I lead a pretty normal life:
I work, I have conversations,
I make grocery lists and cook dinners,
I parent my children,
I am a wife;
I am not always stuck inside my selves
but it feels so often that part of myself is in this place,
while, at the same time,
the most important parts are in a different place,
a place that can’t be accessed in the mundane,
a place so deep I need to be alone to open,
be alone to sift through and allow to be free
you gently break the quiet;
you speak to me in your raspy voice and I can hear you,
I can talk and follow along the well worn paths we’ve created in our many years together,
but my most important parts are somewhere else,
and I can’t seem to locate them
