letters into the void 1:11a 29th may, 2020

I hope you are safe and well, and stateside.

I’ve gone back to work, albeit only one day a week with clients, one when the shop is closed. I went for a test at the drive-through location in New Rochelle. Everyone there, the State Troopers, the Army, the healthcare workers, everyone was so calming. One of the army guys, the name on his jacket said Lorenzo, he called me beautiful. He saw how nervous I was and he called me beautiful.

I’m waiting for results, no symptoms but I’m in a public-facing position. I was sicker than I ever have been in my life back in January but no way of knowing if that was it.

I’ve gone back up to the pottery after a 5 months hiatus. I’ve wanted to go back, needed to go back. I’m making new work with nowhere to sell it but online. It isn’t really the selling that the making is about, though.

I called my father.
I haven’t spoken to him in a brutally long time. i know that he did not recognize my voice. but i told him that i loved him and he told me that he loved me too. i’m going to call him again this saturday.

I’ve been writing more, leaning into how cleanly I want to live my life, how little extra baggage I really want to carry with me. Channeling and focusing the rage that has been, in my past, such an incredibly destructive force with little to no benefit into something that I can use as both a tool and a weapon. It’s been this side of exhilarating, and I want to keep it that way. It isn’t something I want to revel in feeling but to be glad to be done with.

My second husband used to get off on watching my fury rage on unfettered. He loved how sharp I was, how precise. How everything I said was undeniably true.

That is until the day it finally turned on him in earnest. The day in couples’ therapy when the doctor asked me how I was feeling after watching me sit and seethe for 20 minutes, when he asked me how I was feeling and I turned to my husband and answered,

“I’m feeling like every time you fall asleep before I do how much I’d like to slit your fucking throat.”

I can tell you he didn’t like it very much then.

I’m not going to send this to you, am I.
No.

I have no way of knowing if you are alive.
I wish I did.

thoughtless. 1027p 9 march, 2020

how dare you.
how dare you ask me if it was wise, crinkling up your face to say no, I don’t think so
“was it wise? to spend so much money on a good mattress?”

HOW DARE YOU.

it isn’t the most expensive mattress, not by far.
it is a good mattress.
a king-size mattress
for my king-size bed
my king-size sheets
my king-size comforters
my king-size blankets.

how DARE you.

I sold my dead husband’s clothes
so that I might have a comfortable place to sleep.

HOW DARE YOU.

i fucking hate spring. 9 march, 2020

I hate spring.

I hate spring so fucking much.
Especially since i love all the flowers.

I fucking hate spring.
.

It’s the weirdest thing, what happens to people’s faces when you say
“i hate spring”
it’s like you’ve said “I EAT KITTENS ALIVE. WITH HOT SAUCE.”
like how could you hate spring?
Spring?
even the fucking name SPRING
fuck you.
FUCK YOU.

i never knew it was a thing, a valid thing that it wasn’t only me
not until i was thirty.
not until i read
An Unquiet Mind
saw that it was a familiar, if not common symptom of bipolar disorder,
like self-medicating (check!)
poor impulse control (doubling down!!)
hypersexuality (triple-whammy checkaroonie!!!)

All of the manic, growing energy of the Northern Hemisphere
and Mother(fucking) Nature (you malevolent cunt) going balls to the wall
sending roots deep into the earth
budding leaves reaching for the sky
grow grow GROW
the very air hums as if electrified
is electrified
amplifying every atom, every nuance of mood
every paranoid, unworthy thought
it is taking enormous effort
exquisite pain
to bridle this rage, this beast.
you can’t possibly be worthy
you?
no
not you.

Not. You.

i fucking hate spring.

but summer’s worse.

head of my table. 5 february, 2020

Soon enough, “our wonderful table” will be in my new apartment.
The movers are coming Sunday.

I’m trying to remember how we went about getting this table, and it isn’t coming to me.
I do remember discussing the improbability and absurdity of the Amish selling through a website.
I do remember showing you the stain samples they’d sent
(through the mail? pony express? horse and buggy?)
and holding them perpendicularly to each other to mimic how the top would look against the apron
(apron? the lip-thing underneath. you know.)
and not understanding so much how you couldn’t extrapolate those two small samples
into an eight-foot long table
made from 100+ year old reclaimed barn boards.
A dining room table for our stay-put-forever home.
For the dining room with the gracefully curved, bowed wall, mimicked upstairs
in our bedroom.

(something about that curved wall has always captivated me,
looking up at it the other night in bed, after
remarking, small and quiet in the near-dark, “i’m excited to go”
hot tears springing to my wide-open eyes as my unsettled, manic brain
d r a g g e d
my vision across that curve,
trying to slow it,
knowing there would not be too many more nights like this one.
none, perhaps.
A hand in mine, comforting. Lips to my forehead.
Not yours; comforting still.)

Our wonderful table, though.
I’ll sit where you used to sit,
because it is my wonderful table, now.
I plan to fill it with food and drink,
its chairs with friends and family,
the same as we had planned.
The same as we pulled off, albeit with some ugliness.
There isn’t going to be stress at this table anymore.
There isn’t going to be ugliness.
There just isn’t.

The only things I am bringing forward with me are love and light and happiness and joy.
And all of the lessons I am still learning along the way to get here.

Backyard, frontyard dogs. 912a, 26 january, 2020

Logan and Po’boy are having some conversation on the other side of the street.
A fairly heated discussion, to be sure, though not necessarily escalating into argument territory.

Logan, still making his case as the older boy remains quiet, perhaps checking the bushes for bones, (I don’t know, I’m all the way back here, how could I see?) mouthy and insistent, bright and bold. His strategy works; Po’boy interjects a few half-hearted *woofs* then a few more, weaker, then quiets.

The neighborhood is quiet, save for the low hum of the recycling plant on the edge of the city, varied bird calls (the only one I know for sure is the crow atop the tree two yards over), and a few passing cars.

Po’boy renews his half of the conversation with confidence and vigor, however, Logan is nowhere to be heard.

Five more inquisitive barks from Po’boy, then three more.
Then silence.

To Be Without You (with apologies to Ryan Adams) 17 january, 2020

It’s so hard to be without you (yes it is)
Lying in the bed, you are so much to be without (dear gods more than any one, still)
Rattles in my head that empty drum filled with doubt (not so much doubt, anymore. No.)
Everything you lose, the wisdom will find its way out (this. this. this.)
Every night is lonesome and is longer than before (Not every night. And no.)
Nothing really matters anymore (There are things that really, really do.)

It’s so hard to be without you
Used to feel so angry and now only I feel humble (yes but the timing. not angry anymore. free.)
Stinging from the storm inside my ribs where it thunders (and inside my skull)
Nothing left to say or really even wonder (so much left to say! so much left to wonder, to discover.)
We are like a book and every page is so torn (some can be mended. Some discarded. Some set ablaze.)
Nothing really matters anymore (not in that desperate, urgent way. no.)

It’s so hard not to call you (I listen to your voicemails to me. Mine to you. You saved them.)
Thunder’s in my bones out in the streets where I first saw you (the wind’s been blowing like mad)
When everything was new and colorful, it’s gotten darker (richer, bolder, deeper)
Every day’s a lesson, things were brighter before (every day’s a lesson, things are clearer now)
Nothing really matters anymore (the things that do are still here)

It’s so hard to be without you (it will never be easy)
Everyday I find another little thread of silver (all the better to color purple)
Waiting for me when I wake some place on the pillow
And then I see the empty space beside me and remember
I feel empty, I feel tired, I feel worn (I feel good. I feel alive. I feel ready.)
Nothing really matters anymore (Everything matters.)

(I advise getting a little out of your head, listen to the music, and read along. that’s how I wrote it.)

2020

It doesn’t feel like it’s 35° out.

As I sit in my backyard, dressed in my dead husband’s jammy bottoms, flip-flops, a Sleepy Hollow Old Dutch Church Fest hoodie (the real Sleepy Hollow, not that bullshit place on TV), a fuzzy green jacket with ears, last night’s makeup on my face, my “t r a n s c e n d e n t” Spotify playlist filling the crisp air, a cup of coffee, and an as-yet unlit little bowl full of weedy goodness, I feel ready. Ready to go.

Ready for this next chapter in what has become This Widow’s Life. “You Are The Best Thing” by Ray LaMontagne is on; I’ve hit shuffle as I always do. I was about to skip through it when I realized, I am the best thing that’s ever happened to me. I am. Me, in my infinite iterations.

Next up is “Dreams” as covered by LÉON. I’ve lit the bowl by now, the beauty of the music wending its way through my brain. “…when the rain washes you clean, you’ll know…” I am enjoying being swept away by the lyrics and emotion and don’t even bother to argue with it as I usually do, “thunder only happens when it’s raining” because THUNDERSNOW.

Tedeschi Trucks now, with “Keep On Growing”.
This is my soundtrack. This is my direction.
Forward, ever forward.
Yeah, yeah, yeah!

1056a 3 december, 2019. Antarctica.

listening to talk of “bucket lists”
places they want to visit

long ago we shared our bucket list adventures
not
actually
going anywhere, no.
but talking about them.
seemed rational, if not feasible.
I’d sent away for this catalogue
this Antarctic adventures catalogue.
came once a year and lived in the downstairs bathroom.
I mean.
we were living in our stay put forever house.
why not think about forever plans?

I haven’t really thought about Antarctica in a long time.
sometimes it creeps in
I push it away.

far away as it seems.

8:42a, 30 november, 2019

…oh what a world, i don’t want to leave,
there’s all kinds of magic
it’s hard to believe…

all of this, new
all these things, these
discoveries
conversations
realizations
breakthroughs.

I thought you weren’t here to see
I thought I couldn’t share them with you
and now I see how wonderfully wrong I was

…’cause you’re here right now
and I know what I feel…

you are here for every new thing.
all of them.
the you in me sees it all.

*Oh What a World by Kacey Musgraves

12:45p, Thanksgiving Day, 2019

So I never liked my last name growing up.
Schwartz
One syllable, one vowel, lots of consonants.
My sister and I were the only ones with it in grade school.
Come middle school and a whole bunch of new kids.
Lots of Schwartzes, none of us related.
I never liked introducing myself, either.
Didn’t like the sound of my own name in my own mouth.
The sound of it on the lips of others
still odd to me, strange.
Always feeling accusatory at first, second
…

I’d changed it to take my first husband’s name, Block.
Which wasn’t even his, really.
Block.
ugh.
Got rid of him and his fool name.
Back to Schwartz by default.
The second one, Aubert.
OH-bear.
(don’t marry a rebound, people. It doesn’t end well.)
“Best thing in my life right now,” I told him on the phone as I was leaving the DMV,
“is getting my own name back on my license.”
Accurate, but certainly not kind.
Unnecessary to say. I’m sorry now that I did then.

The third one, though, the third one stayed up.
Hoffman.
What if I hyphenated it?
Schwartz-Hoffman jfc no thank you that’s a mouthful.
We discussed combining our surnames,
this wonderfully wonky man of mine.
Schwartzman. Or…

Hoffartz.
I mean.
Truly.

In the end I decided that I wanted to be Mrs. Hoffman.
And since I decided (upon resolving my second mistake)
that my signature would be a mononym forevermore
signing it like
Cher or
Madonna
somehow it got easier to say my own name.
Lysa.
Like lovely.
Lysa with a Y.
(watch the furrowed brow as they try to put that together
where? where does the Y go?)

On facebook I dropped my middle name in favor
of putting my maiden name there
(maiden name! ooo how archaic!)
yet it annoys me beyond reason when people use that entire name.
Lysa Schwartz Hoffman
because that is not who I am.
I am
Lysa Hoffman.

When I berate myself it’s usually to say
“c’mon Schwartz, hustle up”
liking that name now, perhaps only as an afterthought,
but feeling comfortable in it.

so today, feeling a measure of all the things you’re supposed to feel at thanksgiving
and more content and pleased with my comfort in my evolution
I changed my name again, relegating (Schwartz)
and elevating myself to who I decided to be when I married Gary.

I finally got there, here.
Train’s not staying, though,
she’s moving forward.
taking my name with me into the night.
Because what other comfort is there
than knowing my true name?