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.

waiting to inhale. 713a, 3 january, 2020

I hate this. All of it.

I hate this president, I hate the people who elected him. I hate every single person who voted to put him into office in 2016, and every single person who voted to try and keep him there. Zero exceptions. I don’t care about anyone’s misogynistic, stupid, idiotic reasoning for voting for him. If you voted for him I hate you. I don’t care about you. I want you to disappear off the face of the Earth. There is no amount of apologizing, bargaining, begging that will help, that will ameliorate, there is no remedy. this is what you have done, this is all your fault.

I hate everything about him, everything he stands for, everything he is.

I hate. So much hatred that is dissolving me from the inside out. And goddess help the idiot who tells me that I need to let go of that. What the fuck do you think I’m trying to do here. there is no letting go. There is only purging. There is only excision. There is only vomiting up volcanic toxic spew. There is only violence and wrath and rage.

I wake up and cry because there is nothing I can do. I wake up crying because it wakes me up in the middle of the night.

All I can do is wait and hope that I don’t get sick and that I don’t get anybody else sick.

I wait on tenterhooks to be able to spend time with my partners. To kiss B, to snuggle with him and spend the night with him. To wake up with him and kiss him some more. I spent more time with him yesterday than I have spent with any partner in over a year. It was about twenty-two hours, total. I have no idea when we’ll be able to do that again. No time soon. No.

I cringe every time someone touches me accidentally without meaning to or just pushes by and touches me. It makes me want to hiss and bare my fangs. How dare you when I cannot?

I flinch when people reach out for my hand and I don’t want them to touch me because I don’t want to get sick.

I am sitting outside in my car, the engine off and the windows open with a rapidly cooling cup of coffee writing this so that I can watch the sun come up. It is somewhere south of freezing and I am waiting to calm down enough so that I can light my pipe and give myself some comfort.

I want to live in a no-news bubble where I don’t hear anything at all about how much he is fucking up the rest of this for everyone. All I want to hear is nothing. nothing.

I can’t wait much longer.

pandemic diaries: 10:55p 6 may, 2020

in desperation I tried to not be desperate.
(I do not think that I was successful.)

to your infinite credit you did not shy from my touch
you never do.
I stroked your cheek, your chest, your collarbone.
watched you inhale
exhale.
I tried to be in the moment, to get out of my head and simply feel.
Wanting to swallow you whole,
to be swallowed. Whole.

i could not.

breathing through my open mouth
so I would not sniffle
so I could control it (could I? Girl.)
so my breath would not hitch
so you would not know.
Right.

I had to stop thinking about
about not touching any other person
until I see you again
having not touched any other person since the last time I saw you
And the time before that.
no other physical contact no matter how wholesome.
None.

I am hoping that the intrusive, inconsistent noise from overhead isn’t disturbing you
anywhere near as much as it is clearly disturbing me.

i cannot sit with these thoughts anymore so I turn away
pushing myself back up against your hip to hide the inevitable tears that
are
Falling.

you know.
you just know as I just know, always.
You curve me into your embrace
resting your head on mine
dear, sweet thing.

You have given me exactly what I have needed
And for a while, it is enough.

pandemic diaries: 7:41a international star wars day 2020 | birthday thanks

“I don’t know how it’s possible, but I, I think my birthday this year was possibly the best one I’ve ever had. It’s certainly one of the most special, and I want to thank everyone for being a part of it. 52 on 5/2 I’m certainly not playing with a full deck it’s more like a deck full of jokers.
So thank you everyone for being part of it.”

for the record (and as far as i know you look it up if you don’t believe me) for the past fifty-two years it has been shitty exactly once on my birthday. That was 2001, the year I turned 33 and one of the years I was in and around dating Noel. I’m sure he had just recently broken it off again. Anyway.

my parents built the house I grew up in in 1970. A typical, split-level ranch. Right outside my bedroom window they planted this glorious cherry tree, a Kanzan Sakura, with the big, fat, pale pink marshmallowy blossoms. I love that tree, it’s my favorite flower of all. Blooms every year on my birthday.

I don’t remember how early on but it was early, I told Gary that when I finally owned my own home I would plant one of those trees in my yard. The first spring that we were in the house we planted our tree. We didn’t plant it in a good spot, it didn’t get anywhere near the kind of sunlight it needed underneath the massive canopy of maple and oak. I could, however, see the blossoms from my bedroom window.

Last year, after the house went into foreclosure, I knew that would be my last birthday with that view, of cherry blossoms from my bedroom window. And then the neighbor went ahead and chopped down the maple and oak, that gorgeous canopy of green that had been protecting my head for 13 years. A full backyard of sunlight meant that the cherry tree would have a chance to grow properly now, reaching up towards the sun instead of slinking around corners to find it. Only I wouldn’t be here.

This year however, with the world on pause, I got one last, magical reprieve to spend with my tree. So I went to my backyard, prepared to see admirers as any queen would, and enjoyed my day under the cherry blossoms.

pandemic diaries: 734a 25 april 2020

good morning.
it is a beautiful day
the sun is out, shining on my bared skin
raptors circle overhead
in the clear blue sky
and we are all thinking about death.

softness, poignant and melancholy in my ears.
rediscovered from a time of such darkness a hopelessness, back then.

i cried every day eleven years ago, every day.
always on my way to work.
often in the bathroom.
usually from relief in the parking lot.

“…lose yourself in lines dissecting…”

good morning.
it is a beautiful day.

pandemic diaries 224p 21 april 2020

i cant smoke enough today
cant distract from all the love all the
couples
all of the truly meant “i love you”s
not the sweet softness of friends or family but the true
deep, desperateness of a real love.
the kind of love that has seen pain, felt it within its walls.
heard its voices quake in fear.

this pain this
absence.
this lack.

the isolation makes it more intense more
invasive
the virus of loneliness manifesting and growing wilder still.

try as i might to quench this beast this
monster
i sit under the clear skylight
under the rain
no sound other than the shrieking in my skull
the purring of the engine
the staccato of the rain on the car.

six thousand
five hundred
seventy-eight days ago
on a day very much like (and completely unlike)
today
i saw your face for the first time
saw you wink
for the first time saw that thousand-watt smile
for the first time.
6,578 days ago i fell in love with you for the first time.
there honestly has not been a single day since
that i haven’t had the most incredibly complex thoughts about you.

i wish i could comfort myself with the belief that somehow
somehow you know all this
that in some way you are hearing me
seeing me.
still loving me in that complex, fierce way you had.

but this is how i know there is no god.
this
this is how i know for sure.
(nobody fuckin come at me over this you can fuck off and keep your smug shit to yourself i am TIRED)

unrequited love is BULLSHIT and it is roaring inside me like a furnace
oh it has places to go (well it used to, now didn’t it)
but it is held back
it is most definitely restrained

it doesn’t want to be.

everybody EVERYBODY
everybody says how strong, how brave, how resilient
WHAT CHOICE DO I HAVE.
no one is coming to save me. No one.

so i sit and i smoke and i cry and i hold my own hands.
and i scream inside my head all day long.
and when i do talk to someone anyone
mania takes over i have no control.
and i scare myself.

gam zeh ya’avor gam zu le tovah / this too shall pass and it is all for the good
i know I KNOW
but it is killing me NOW.

it’s been almost an hour that i’ve been out here, now, smoking.
my plant is finally drenched.
my medicine is finally working.
i smoked enough to take down a fucking RHINO.
there won’t be any ill effect from this, either.
my body knows what it needs, i feel clearheaded, if stoned.
none of the usual giggliness i usually do but most definitely
uplifted.
my medicine works hard,
i work harder.

pandemic diaries: 6:35p 14 april 2020

holding your own hand just isn’t the same.

pandemic diaries: 1145p 10 april 2010

this being apart shit.

this fucking shit is tearing my body apart
raking my flesh
scissoring my veins
shredding my bones…

it is rendering me jellied,
puddled.

my body knows this feeling
this d e p r e s s i o n.
it isn’t the right time for it not like this.
all of this laying around and doing nothing
AND BEING TOLD ITS OKAY.
this is what’s different.
i’m not tired i am active. alert. pointy.
with no release.
no way to let go.
no way to succumb.

So I smoke.

and i eat.

and i smoke.

and I have a rich fantasy life and when I do venture out it is with
dire regard
like a fox I am so
aware.
I crave human interaction I crave
I crave.
i need
voice. a face.
a touch .

this is tearing me apart.