Category: pandemic

the rest of forever

This figuring out of things this
Figuring out of how things came to be
Things came to be me how I
Became.

It is overwhelming in every single way in all
three hundred sixty degrees.

It is inwardly and outwardly and upwardly and completely bowling me over and tearing me apart

no it is never too late to learn I just wish you were around so I could show you what I’ve learned who I am who I have become.

Who I am still becoming.

I am sitting in my car and I am smoking and I am shaking and I am full of fear and full of love and they are the same thing.

They have always been the same thing.

As I am parsing all of these things as I am
As I am.
As I am uncovering all of these separate very distinct very discrete things
As I am peeling back the layers and understanding implicitly very explicit differences in things
I am filled with patience and sadness at all the time lost in between then and now.

Knowing that I have the rest of forever to be well.

Having promised you the rest of forever to heal.

I had the rest of your forever.
and you have mine.

741a 3d february 2022

I am feeling crazy this morning.

that in itself isn’t so unusual but this is just

This is so much on top of so much on top of so much please.

I don’t want this I don’t want this it doesn’t help to say I don’t want this until I say it I don’t want this I don’t like this I don’t want this none of it thank you please stop

stop.

1142p 11th december 2021

this late at night
at this time of year
there are some very dark stretches of route nine heading north to home
so dark that i could turn off my headlights

and disappear

there are very few other cars
no lights
i could drift into nothingness
brightness

then black.
Nothing.

the road ahead opens its maw
promising to swallow me whole.
it could be done.
Over.

this void within my chest swells
my brain reels

this is a thing I know, now, filed away.

thanks giving. 747a 27th november 2021

i am thankful. greatly grateful.
hugely.
for my family, with whom i did not spend the day, but who understands,
or at least is willing to take my word for it that it would only harm me to be there.
i am grateful for my friends, my lovers, my loves.
the people with whom i did spend time, both physical and emotional.
trying to be as out of my head as i could stretch
while still remaining tethered, albeit tenuously.
knowing that this feeling as all feeling always does
will pass
and that there is indeed if not light
then a less-dark path.

(re)possessed

I am sitting on the damp chair (everything is damp)
It is 3:41 in the morning and in the space where my car usually lives there is nothing but a half a piece of paper towel
I am smoking and I am smoking and I am smoking and nothing is going to soothe this I fear
The woman who comes to repossess my car at 3:24 in the morning says, “I don’t want to embarrass you”
I am not embarrassed
I am defeated, again.

She says, “you have your health” I snicker
Do I? Do I.
“You have a roof over your head”
yeah and a house in foreclosure.
“Just call Nissan in the morning” she says, airily.
Just call.
She says this as if it were actually that easy.
Just call Nissan.
I try to explain that it isn’t that easy.
That I have widow brain and I am bipolar.
At the word bipolar she perks up.
“Do you need to call someone? Are you going to be okay.” wanting to absolve herself of further responsibility
The answer to that is obviously no and no. No I am not going to be okay.
No I am not okay.
No I am not okay no I am not embarrassed but I am desperate.
How am I going to get back to sleep.

It is 3:55 in the morning and everything is damp.

518p 2d march, 2021. On defeating suicide.

That’s what it is, that’s what suicide is
It is literally the only and one solution to
“I don’t want to feel like this anymore and I know that I will
I don’t want to feel like this anymore and the only surefire way to not ever feel like this anymore is to kill myself.”
That is the only surefire way.I don’t want to feel like this anymore I hate feeling like this I don’t want to feel like this anymore

my voice grows shrill inside my head and out and it amplifies as my heart rate amplifies and screams

I don’t want to feel like this anymore.
There isn’t any other solution to not feeling like this anymore to *not ever* feeling like this anymore.

nothing is helping nothing is helping nothing is helping

it is going to keep being bad, isn’t it
it is going to keep hurting
yes.
yes it is.
people are going to keep being stupid
you are going to want to scream and hit and rage and you cannot
it is going to keep driving driving you down lower and lower and lower until you cannot breathe.

you might not want to feel like this anymore but Mojo.
Mojo and cookies.
Weed.
The full fucking moon and a sky full of stars.
Kissing.
Art.
Music.
Kissing.

There will be kissing Saturday.

so if I’m getting this right the idea is not to wish for it to stop feeling this way because it will always keep feeling this way
I mean it’ll stop for a while but then it goes right back it always has and it always will
it always always will.

no the idea is to not think about how terrible it is feeling and to only think about ending that but to think about all of the things you don’t want to end
Mojo.
Mojo and cookies.
Weed.
Those are all things I can do by myself
Those are all things I don’t have to depend on anyone else.
but kissing.
You can’t do that alone.
You need at least one other person for that.

You can’t go just yet.
You’re not done yet.
There are still so many good things.

1012p 1st march 2021

I miss you.
I’m trying so hard to not miss you and I know that isn’t the point
I am trying so hard to be independent and stand alone on my own two feet even though it is clear that I cannot

when it seems that I have finally gotten my footing underneath
after that terrible summer
i have gained my balance and then I meet you.
you who sweeps me off my feet and takes my breath away in one fell swoop.

I know that you are coming back I know that I have nothing to fear and yet all I have is fear.

I take smiling pictures of myself to prove that I am happy, prove to whom, prove to myself? but the smiles don’t come easy.
crooked smiles, nonetheless.

I think about what you might be doing while I am sitting here and I know that doesn’t serve any good purpose but I do it anyway.

I watch the waning moon rise higher in the frigid sky,
fingers turning white with cold.
clouds moving with the slow scud of a Star Wars sequence,
branches in front of my windshield frantic and terse.

It is finally too cold to sit out here any longer but I am not yet finished.
I do not feel anywhere near able to sleep.
I am missing all of the missing tonight.
All of the missing who mean anything.
Even the ones I don’t want to miss.
The ones I would rather the missing be inequal.
I wish they would hurt like I hurt. I wish I knew they did.
That isn’t very gracious.
I don’t feel very gracious.

614p, 26th february, 2021. hope.

a photo of me with my unwashed, tearstained face, in front of a wall with a laser-cut rising sun sculpture, a photo of me as “Rosie (the Riveter) Revisited” by my husband in 2002, and an exhortation to “cheer up honey pie” .
there is no filter on this photo.

I am driving and I am listening to the President and I am crying
I am crying and I am crying and I am crying and they are huge ugly tears
“A dose of hope”, he says and the tears flood down my face “a dose of hope” he says

Hope is something that I never ever had.
It was never even on the list of things to look for.
Hope was for the foolish and the losers and the suckers.
the idea of hope was as painful as the reality of unrequited love, a crush that goes nowhere, being ghosted by someone you really, really thought you liked.
Hope was not for me, not ever.

but maybe,
maybe now it is.
maybe I can have some for myself, just a little.
I’m not asking for much.
Just a little.

Hope.
The taste of it, the texture.
rolls around in my mouth, between my fingers.
hope.

I draw my hand back, my heart back sharply from the edge of this hope
too sharp, this edge, too unknown.

My chest tightens, my jaws clench, my fingernails dig into my palms.
breath shallows, and hitches as my eyes darken, kohl smudging my cheeks.

“Guess what!” the President says, excitement clear and bright through the speakers
“We landed a rover on Mars!”

hope.

1158a 19th january 2021

i can tell my mood by my handwriting. manic, here. i noticied it whike working, needed to take it down.

this lines running altogether
all together
((manic manic)) heart rate elevated
((panic panic)) eyes wide and brow creased
grateful for the mask covering most of my face
it hides the quivering of my mouth
the tightness of my lips pressed against my teeth
i can see the not-curvedness of my letters
the thank you notes i am trying to bury my head in
brain is so scattered so noisy
grateful dead on the speakers but it is jangling
not soothing me at all the way i need.
i shove a chocolate bar in my mouth
a three musketeers
where are my musketeers?
where are my compadres? my friends?