Weigh Scale

Do you hear it?

Relief sounds like

a girl’s slip

a bird’s wing

your eye lashes fluttering

against your blushing cheek

Do you hear it?

Suffering sounds like

cloth pulled by stick across dirt floor

chalk pressed violent into board

fingers opening blouses raggedly

your chest bone protrudes

more than the year before

Do you hear it?

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reminding themselves they can still fly

Only so much can be said of birds, or landscapes

yet grief? Grief is a world incapsulated in a tear

held to the sun and magnified, its kaleidoscope of color

without end

and while you may see me sitting at this table

with dried flowers catching wan Winter sun

my face a careful study of emotion beneath surface

I am actually at this very moment

lying on the unwashed floor

feeling cold tile invade my pores

just like the virus who crept into my stomach

changing everything like zealous house cleaner

see, on the floor I can curl up like I did as a child

pretend I am a dragon again, where ageing and its horrors

or just the spite of unbidden sickness

will not come for me, because I am no longer real.

The sun light will fade and with it, shadows come

reminders of our ephemerality

a dance with what is and what is no longer

the ghosts of my grandparents waltz beneath pear trees

their necks bent to dark skies, mouths slack with amusement

I thought then, nothing could disturb the fabric of the world

because youth told me so

and lies were easy to sew

delusion, such a merry friend

now it is not as easy and like them, my mask grows weary

often wishing to climb into bed and read

stories of others who have lived and died

sitting at tables, lying on floors, looking upward, open mouthed

finding ways to express the horror and brief respite

of coping with pain

I so admire those souls who laugh

though I suspect sometimes they simply do not think

of how things really sit

and that’s all right

because there’s no one way

of getting through this

the birds, maybe they know other means

perhaps that is why they migrate and it is has

less to do with warmth and more to do with

reminding themselves

they can still fly

(Expecting To Fly, by Buffalo Springfield, one of the best songs of the era https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzMl0-bhNcM&t=25s)

Stand in radiance

I think of you as I might

the collected soil outline of a beloved plant, died in Wintered frost

slow the creep toward perish, I hold back, I do not want to enter that room

with its antiseptic smell, lolling tongues of linoleum stretching like vast desert

here nothing thrives

not you, in your beige iron bed with metallic purr of machines overhead

nor the sucking out of sight sound of life being apportioned and gentle knock and brush of clutter off stage

I have learned to manage my desires, like labeled things put away and forgotten

they seem inconsequential in the gravity of this moment, elongated into a maw, disabusing itself in perpetuate howl

the green eyed girl who sat astride you devouring your skin with the hunger of the famished, is just a filament of memory, drowsy with being taken out and examined many times

what is real feels false, we fall apart with rules, we are well behaved in chaos

as rain falls, drowning response, we are free briefly, to call for Gods who are sleeping against their fatigue of us

I look down at my fingers entwined in memory, carving the halls of you with journeys taken to your very core

wish I could write like a girl who didn’t need to rinse her eyes of salt and her mouth of violence

there are no mirages in this sterile land, only the abundant hygiene of fear, roasting itself on impotence

here even you, are forgotten to yourself. I wonder if you recall how we were or if

this eclipsed reality, so suffocating and tightly arranged, is your only memory

occasionally I want to do something vulgar and wrong, to break the dreadful count-down

call an old lover, meet them in the broom closet for some rearranging of clothes, we don’t know how to handle things, so we explode quietly inside ourselves

just to feel I am not plummeting alongside you

faithless for sure, my brand of lusting for life and wellness, anything but encroaching perishment, we fear dying even as we seek it

apparently I am not alone in this

strangers will swap bodily fluids in desperate snatching, on top of folded doctors overalls. That strange, nameless brand of green we all loathe

I was a false girl before we met, learning to reign in her impulses against a backdrop of damage
thriving under the rental of youth with no care for those far-off dates waiting in distant wings

life was already its own brand of unbearable, it felt yet, too searing to imagine decrepitude or bad luck

instead, thrive on the daydream, liquor up the inside of your nightmares and send them galloping and sweaty into the abyss

rest in the drowsy arms of indifference, for everyone wants something and nothing is as it seems

stop caring

until blinded or crippled, you crawl to your date with the inevitable

hearing your ancestors crow their dissatisfaction at your cliched rejection of fate

compassion doesn’t cost, but as I stare at the vacancy in your eyes I know

i’d say yes to the proffered ease of escape

yes to anonymous lovers and things to someday regret

but not now whilst we stand under the radiance

when life still reigns and I know how to squeeze from it, that ounce of pleasure

not hedonist but survivor. Some survive in the calm shallows

I want to wade waist deep in warm water, feel your touch bringing me back to life

not forget what it was to circle the varied heavens and their demands

nor the feeling of my heart in my throat, birthing color and chaos in equal order

I imagine you as you were, impossibly alive, bright in ways that hurt my eyes

our dance around the mandala of us, ever decreasing, unawares of our own diminishment

your last words lingering in pre-storm humid air, like fruit left a little long in sun

sticky and soft we meld together and break apart with the astringent sting of broken clay

turning again to earth, as if it had never, not once, not even in dream

held water.

The Right To Die

https://www.yahoo.com/news/column-californias-aid-dying-law-100053133.html

The Right To Die debate is one I have strong opinions on. Ever since Brittany Maynard decided to end her life to avoid inevitable agony and suffering and watching her discuss this in many interviews, I concluded that the Right To Die law should exist for everyone, everywhere.

There are pitfalls no doubt. I can imagine nightmare scenarios where people are ‘terminated’ by bored relatives who do not wish to take care of them. So obviously safe-guards must be paramount. That said, I am open to the RTD law be expanded to include dementia patients and those with serious Chronic Illness, including long-term-depression.

That’s murder! You may say. And part of the invariable slippery-slope! But I would disagree. Unless you have been the victim of Chronic Illness and/or long-term-incurable-depression you cannot speak for others who suffer each and every day.

A few years ago I killed a kitten who was suffering. It was in agony, unsavable and its liter mates had died in excruciating agony. It was a Sunday and no pet-store nearby was open to euthanize the kitten. To spare her suffering I put her to sleep myself. It was the hardest thing I have ever done, I didn’t actually think I had it in me (to take a life) being vegetarian among other things. But the compassion for her suffering over-took the fear of harm.

The harm was her suffering any longer and that is how I see RTD laws.

Obviously we have to put into place protections against this being misused. I recognize that many deeply devout folks believe God takes us when we are ready, but I have never subscribed to that. How is suffering in agony EVER God ordained? If a God exists I do NOT believe he/she chooses people to suffer in agony for years on end. Thus for me, that argument is moot.

Without the issue of ‘taking God’s job away’ we are left with the morality of RTD laws. If I see someone suffering as horrific as it is, to consider their dying at my or their own hands, I would want to help them not suffer. If that was their true wish.

In the case of dementia patients, if they sign a waiver now they can ask not to be force-fed and kept alive, but it still means those wishes can be ignored, effectively they can exist for years as a vegetable, and do nothing about avoiding that outcome. This isn’t a pragmatic thing. Obviously our society is going to be destroyed by dementia cases as more and more develop it, but irrespective, this isn’t about convenience of death, it’s about the mercy of death.

Few of us (I know some exceptions) would wish to shit on themselves, not be able to eat, remember, function etc, and lose all dignity and awareness. Most of us would prefer to die. Giving us a way to write this out and have a representative help us achieve this, seems to me, a mercy not a convenience.

The whole subject is heart-achiningly awful and we avoid talking about it for the most part. But we need to think of this. Just recently with Covid 19 ventilation, the question of dying and life has been very pertinent and young people who never wrote living-wills have been in limbo. It is never too early to consider these things because we really don’t know.

When I put my cat of 18 years to sleep it haunted me. Briefly I went back on my belief that RTD was the best choice because I thought; If I can’t handle the images and flashbacks of the catheter being put in my cats arm, and watching him being put to sleep, if I felt that was ‘wrong’ in some way, how could I handle it if it was my dad? Or someone I loved?

Truly I think I am nearly not strong enough to cope with that day. But despite that I would still do it. TO END THE SUFFERING. It would haunt me and yes it would feel worse to me than if they died naturally just as it would have been ‘easier’ if my cat had died naturally instead of being given drugs that killed him. Watching that was horrific and it did feel ‘unnatural’ because it was but sometimes it’s the only choice, and it’s the best choice and even if it leaves us feeling horrific, we should consider it.

I don’t regret putting my cat to sleep. But I regret that it had to happen and I still get flash-backs of the last moments. If I had to do that with a human-being I know it would be the hardest thing I ever had to do. But if I loved that human being and it was THEIR WISH I would hope I had the courage and love within me to do it or be part of it or at very least, support their wish.

Having had chronic illness I know we can be ‘not in our right minds’ and so the issue of ‘how sick is too sick?’ must be considered. Depressed people for example, may be able to be cured, so are they really the right candidates for euthanasia? I don’t know the answer, I only know that if someone I knew had suffered for 20 years and wanted to die, I would find it hard to deny them that mercy. If all else had failed.

This is not what we want to think about but right now, out there, are many people who are in this VERY situation right now and have no recourse to end their suffering. I believe safe laws CAN be made that protect against abuses and I believe at this juncture in our societies evolution we need to consider those things, not to keep our sick numbers in check, but to be merciful to suffering.

The courage of Brittany Maynard has stayed with me ever since I heard about her and followed her story. Some may say that is morbid. I say it is honest. I still think of her, she affected me deeply and opened up this debate. I hope others can get over their prejudices of what they believe others should do and give people a CHOICE. Just like my best friend who doesn’t believe she would have an abortion but believes others should have the right to choose if they want to have one. Such is this debate about an individuals right to choose their outcome. Who can honestly deny that in the face of suffering?

I often think if I live to be old, I will be alone and I fear that very much. I think if it were possible I would choose to end my life simply based on not having enough money to keep going or enough reason and family left to make it worthwhile. Is that wrong? Maybe. But one day that too may exist as an ‘option’ and a mercy, to help those who would otherwise resort to suicide which can often fail and leave awful aftermaths. This is a very sad subject but it’s one many of us will one day face one way or another. I don’t want to dwell on it, but equally, I don’t want to pretend it could never happen.

I think now more than ever, we have learned, anything can happen and we need to be prepared. Taking responsibility for our lives AND our deaths is a responsible decision, and helps those who may be left in our lives, follow our true wishes. I hope I never have to find out, but I believe we should all be prepared for both the best case scenario and the worst. Contrary to popular opinion, taking ones life is probably the hardest thing a person can do, not the easiest. But as this article above states, there are worst things than dying and I would say suffering in agony meets that criteria and forces us then, to consider this subject honestly and with compassion.

I cannot, you see

Photo by Kristina Paukshtite

What if she’s me? The woman screaming without reprieve?

And what if she’s you? The body beneath the sheets lifted by strangers?

Every time the phone rings, I see in my minds eye, your prone form

fallen, or hurt, somehow

this fear I inhabit is years in coming

your fragility creeps up on us like a wettened shroud

once so strong, you’d take me in your bronze arms and

press me to you where the sound of your powerful

heart beat assured me nothing would erase or remove

your certainty

then the sick hiss and whisker of machines

a tube down your throat, a glazed look, no recognition

slack hand filled with needles, empty eyes void of life

I felt you moving away even as you stayed

gone and still there

a stranger in your face, your expressions glazed

even the taste of your lips changed

as if blistering over from sudden Winter storm.

As time ticks down, we look up

to salvation, prayer and hope when

maybe nobody listens

I stand over you as you sleep

your little bluebird chest rising in dream

I want to

climb on the bed and laugh as once we did

curling around each other in chased game

oh so much joy in one shared heart

when i was your girl and you were my

evening rose

now the dust has settled and we still

scattered pictures, cannot see clearly

all around are shadows and shorn warnings

easy to lose ourselves in fears glory

like gathering a bird who has fallen from glass

stunned and dying pressed in our hands

death on us now, like unsought reflection

glinting, glinting, glinting.

I miss you, the you I knew

better than I know myself

who would turn in her sleep and

touch me without waking

such was our eternal fuse

one into the other, no boundaries

and time is a fickle fellow

taking you and keeping you sickened

welded to pills and paper casts of closed theatres

we stand apart, at times nearly severed

I would sacrifice all to make you well

but i have given everything i know

it is clear we go in different directions

one is the end and you drift like

wind on frigid water

while i continue to swim upstream

i cannot, you see

let go

your bright feathers dull

and still i look up

when birds fly into glass

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MAKE ME

When I’m not telling people

I am the least competitive person you’ll meet

I shouldn’t have moved to America, I am an anathema

I am nevertheless, competing with myself

to survive

the breakage, subtle and merciless of my whole

appears to be my greatest talent

should they look me up in the dictionary

I would stare out bleakly at Consequences in Fetus of Nicotine In-Utero

it began before words were formed, a slow

incompleteness quite unlike the robust energies

of my relatives

a thin, wan girl, slow to learn, I made up for it by being sporty

denying the gnawing, gnarling pain in my stomach

was more than a night terror

swimming for medals was competitive after all but

didn’t feel so when, head under water, the cheers sounded

like waves breaking on distant shores, easy to forget

noxious rinse of chlorine in verruca filled inner-city

swimming pool where small measure of fame could be found

among cast-off plasters.

Beneath water I felt powerful, unmolested, not burdened

by sandwich of pain in my gut or how

no-one for me sitting among keening spectators

when I came up for air.

Since then, fantasy has been my succor, I can’t deny it

perhaps I have lived half in petri-dish and tree house

with ‘here be dragons’ written on its door.

When teachers told me; I wasn’t behaving like a good girl

I said ‘make me‘ and spent the afternoon kicking muddy

kid shoes against linoleum hallways

what do they think we imagine as, willful, disobedient, opinionated

we are shunted from our positions as ‘well behaved’ to the

shrine of sinners lost in plastic corridors?

We learn the company of other Reparates

is oddly comforting, no-one to remind us we cannot

make sense of numbers and still struggle with spelling

soon I gave up trying for A’s

locking lips with strange boys who wanted my best friends

instead of this disinterested girl

briefly kissing felt like swimming underwater

but coming up for air was much harder.

I am teleported now into a body and time I never imagined

surviving this long or sitting at this table, watching birds

battle their pecking order outside in a hostile green world

I rarely visit

it’s not reluctance or shyness, they have grown comfortable with

the shifting skin of me

something that happens when you begin to leach

that essence of youth and vigor

realizing, if you can make it out of bed today

you’re doing better than the day before.

I hear in my head, the scold of my mother

who believed I gave myself this illness

and much as they’ve told me that’s madness

I am often found returning to those words

as if they have some clammy power over me

which of course, they do.

I know I was well and then I was not

just like you can remember the day you lost your virginity

or survived a car accident or inherited a country cottage

it’s a day when colors and sounds change

in this case, terror walked into my throat

sucking on me, whispered; bitch, this is your new normal.

Fight as I may, these years have unfolded like those

paper flowers I used to buy in joke stores

put them in water and watch them bloom

only long enough before turning to ink and

wet tree pulp

it’s a form of flaying when strangers are kinder than

those you expect

angry with yourself for not learning sooner

expectation leads to disappointment.

This could be why I didn’t

enter many races or attempt to claw my way to the top (of what?)

better to stay low and wait it out until

you can have your turn

only sometimes, waiting uses up all the time you have left

then it’s almost too late and you have to change

everything.

Nowadays I compete with myself

can I cure the beast that’s become constant companion?

Will it matter if I do?

What happens afterward?

Fear is mauve and dives and swoops like unmated Mockingbird

I hear the kitchen clock and fast thud of my tired heart

Somewhere, I’m still the girl in the treehouse who says ‘make me’

perhaps one day it won’t be disappointment but

something lovely, I can only hope

though my body likes to punch me in the gut

as I fall asleep and try to dream

thump, thump, thump, my mother’s voice

this was something you did wrong

thump, thump, thump, my own voice

no it wasn’t this was an explosion taking the long way around

even getting half way there would be some kind

of accomplishment

which is why I always said it’s not about winning

but making the effort

to which I was told, that’s pretty negative foreign-born-girl.

Where’s your sense of spunk? I think I lost it somewhere between

throwing up for 4 months on end and the doctors saying

maybe it’s incurable…. ho ho ho …. you see

I’m not from here, I don’t belong

though where I came from I hardly know anymore

so I will forge ahead, outcast or survivor, pick a damn straw

with every passing year I realize

I can’t win, I but I will fight

MAKE ME I whisper to myself

bloody well try to MAKE ME stop.

 

TLDR is bogus / we should read, we should care and take the time

TLDR is now in the dictionary (which I think is pathetic). Unfortunately this post is going to be too long and you don’t have time to read it fair enough but I’m writing it anyway because I have to.

…

Today I found out a very lovely girl I recently met (nothing is random) has Gastroparesis. It really affected me. See I had put all the awful horror of last year and the early part of this year into a box and avoided it. That’s what you do when you feel traumatized and are just trying to get your life back. How lucky am I to even have that opportunity?

…

Seeing those who continue to be sick, year in year out, through no fault of their own, makes you so grateful for any renewed health. After getting suddenly and violently ill last year in March with a suspected Noro virus, I got better quickly but remembered the awful feeling of unending nausea. I had two more brief bouts in May and June the last one sent me to the ER for the first time in my life because I had what felt like heart palpitations. Then in August of last year I got violently ill out of the blue, half way through the day, and didn’t get better for nearly a year. One of the hardest parts is how badly let down you can be, by people you thought cared about you, but on the upside, you also find out who really loves you and who doesn’t and that can be powerful and freeing.

…

I had to quit work for the first time in my adult life, I went into massive medical debt and I was suicidal for the first time in my life. I’m not saying this to make anyone feel sorry for me,I feel lucky. I’m saying this because I didn’t know ANY of the stuff surrounding this before, I was taking my health for granted, I thought being healthy living meant I would avoid bad things, it doesn’t always work like that.

…

It is thought Gastroparesis and other similar extreme illnesses are primarily caused by either Diabetes, complete breakdown of your autoimmune system, physical causes like gastric-bypass surgery or something you are born with, but most commonly is considered to have NO CAUSE. However if you do some research it becomes clear that VIRUSES cause the latter onset. Why women get it 9/1 over men and why pre-menopausal young, fit, healthy women get it, is also unknown, although studies show having a full Hysterectomy can reverse it so it clearly has a link with ESTROGEN.

…

I was told after being so violently ill for months without ANY cause found that I must have Gastroparesis. Gastroparesis is actually very rare but has become a catch-all umbrella term for anything the medical industry doesn’t understand. Supposedly the ‘gold standard’ test for this is the gastric emptying test but I found it is very unreliable and can vary from day-to-day. I was put on REMERON which is supposed to help a bit, if anything it made me worse. Fortunately for me, the city where I was at that time living in, San Antonio has one of the best Gastric Research Centers in the US I was able to see them and what I was told was life-changing.

…

My doctor told me I definitely did NOT have Gastroparesis and that in his experience 8/10 people diagnosed with non-diabetic Gastroparesis don’t have it. I had an EGG which showed my stomach was literally flipping and lurching and not emptying fully because it was ‘dumping’ too fast – this is called Gastric arrhythmia and is almost the opposite of Gastroparesis. I was horrified that they could have got it so wrong.

…

I was put on a very low dose of a medication that slows your stomach down. I’d lost so much weight it was dangerous, I couldn’t eat, I was throwing up all the time, I had constant diarrhea (which interestingly most Gastroparesis patients don’t have but they completely ignored how illogical it was to have constant diarreah despite this being almost the opposite of what you’d think of when you imagine a ‘frozen’ or non-working stomach which is the definition of Gastroparesis). The medication changed my life.

…

I had been suicidal for the first time ever because I decided if this didn’t get better I would not want to live. It was too awful. I didn’t have any family support, I felt so alone day in day out, that’s the worst part about something like this. That’s why my heart bleeds for those who are going through it. I had so much medical debt and couldn’t work and was nauseous (really, really severely not a little bit) 24/7 it ruined my life. The medication changed everything I’m still sick but I can finally work again, I can eat normally although my appetite never came back and I have to force myself which sucks. I have put on more weight than what I weighed before I got sick (as a precaution) and I am on the road to recovery. BUT I keep thinking of those who are still going through this.

…

I feel finding out today this lovely friend has what they thought I had, not only means I must do more to help others, because I KNOW how they feel, and what they suffer, but because we need to find out why this disease and others like it, are happening so often now when they used to be super-rare. It isn’t because people aren’t eating organic, most of the people I know with these things did eat well. Many of the doctors dismissed the link to Epstein Barr Virus and it was my PCP who finally decided to test me. My results showed I had EXTREMELY high titers of EBV in my blood. I worked out after contracting the Noro Virus last March I must also have either had a reactivation of EBV from childhood (90 percent of us get it as children or young adults) or I had never had it and got it for the first time.

…

Either way I realized EBV TRIGGERS Gastroparesis and Gastric arrhythmia. Somehow the autoimmune aspect of all Herpes Family viruses (like Shingles too) trigger various illnesses. The most common you think of with EBV are ME, Chronic Fatigue, MS, Fibromyalgia, Stomach Cancer. But more and more doctors are seeing stomach issues like Gastric Arrythmia and Gastroparesis. The medical industry says Gastroparesis is incurable. I don’t believe it is. I have read that if you can get your EBV down you can get over Gastroparesis. Many times if this is the cause then beating the virus beats the symptoms.

…

The only current treatment for EBV is high dose Vitamin C. I could never handle the acidity of Vitamin C. I found that Dr. Mercola made a Lypoic version that doesn’t hurt your stomach and I began to take 4000mg daily. Ideally if you can then IV Vit C works even faster and better. Once the EBV is reduced in your body the symptoms of the Gastroparesis may abate. The information online is awful and inaccurate, it basically says you will have it for life, but I have known people who overcame it, through diet modification, managing stress (which can exacerbate any serious illness) , adequate rest and treating the CAUSE which doctors never talk about because they want to treat the symptoms.

…

During this time many things changed in my life, at first I thought those changes were bad but I have come to see sometimes you have to force yourself to change, and what you think is a bad change, actually is a blessing in disguise. This illness forced me literally to reexamine my life, I realized I needed to make changes, which included moving and living elsewhere, as well as redirecting my energies into things I’d neglected such as teaching dance again and not giving up on my writing. I had let the awful experience dampen my hope and the truth is, when you survive something that awful it gives you a chance to find your joy again which I have in so many ways. I’m still on the road to recovery, I still have pretty bad days, but I am mindful of how far I have come and that along with support from loved ones makes all the difference.

…

If anyone you know is having severe stomach issues and they need help please give them my details because I want to help people. So often people are isolated and uncared about when they are sick. I have known many who have chronic illnesses and they are neglected by their families and invisible in our society. I felt totally alone when I was at my sickest it was the worst feeling in the world, which happens to most who experience long-term illness. The hardest part being since serotonin and other brain chemicals are actually made in the stomach, when you have severe stomach problems you get extremely down and anxious. On top of that Gastric arrhythmia produces a physical anxiety that had me crawling out of my skin, something I never had before.

…

I am truly blessed for having a chance to recover, but I believe in paying forward and I also believe if any of you know someone suffering, some of this information can help that person. The doctor I saw was in San Antonio, Texas and he was really, really good and I’d even say flying there to see him would be worthwhile, he is the clinical director of the National Gastroenterology Research Center in America.

…

If it wasn’t for him, those who love me and doing research I KNOW I would have either killed myself or spent the rest of my life suffering. I want to help anyone else get as well as they possibly can. I truly believe viruses are the cause of most things (cancer, etc) and we can fight them. You are NOT alone. Pass this on please to anyone you know who may be suffering. Thank you for reading if you did. We need to bring awareness to rare diseases like this that are growing in number and striking healthy young people in their prime. Never give up.

Anger

The therapist

she doesn’t look her age, though it wouldn’t matter

she is wise in years and that’s what counts

her skin reminds me of a Swiss lady I knew, she has the color of travel

and I trust her which is all that is needed

she asks me, why I don’t get angry

I think about where my anger has gone

after all I was an angry child

only the other day a friend’s parent reminded me

‘you were a naughty little girl, but I know it was because you were mad’

it feels like she’s talking about someone else

because I have lost my ire

that’s not a good feeling

if I had it back, I imagine

I’d rage through the streets, decrying the bad deeds of an indifferent world

but I sit quietly reading a book and the clock is ticking down the hours I am not

angry

for anger …

can be a severance, a sword, a spike

and we know that

so we tuck it, tightly to sleep

there it lays, sometimes for decades

burning a hole in our placid smile

I know someone who is angry, and they

are a short rocket full of sparks, able to go off at slightest provocation

whilst I, am measured and sensible, like a bad calculation

it gets me nowhere

because I am hurt

deeply by the injustice of little and great things

whoever told me not to be angry, that I didn’t have a right, that it was selfish or

low-brow or just plain bad manners and SHAMEFUL

isn’t here now

and I am, stuck on the wheel of sickness where they like to say

‘isn’t she calm and well adjusted to her own personal brand of hell?’

I thought strength was not letting anger get the upper hand

but i’ve been in a war without any weapons

sometimes anger is better than turning inward or, staying still

it fuels the urge to live

it leaves bruises you remember

I am angry

behind this painted mask and ironed clothes

I am a raging angry woman, with still unbrushed parts

who wants to throw the phone when it rings, out of the window, deliberately breaking glass

I am fury and it is a desire of mine

to scream until my throat is sore and beseech the skies

I am quivering with rage and if I could, I would, throttle the fates

for there is anger inside and though it is buried deep

it has a voice and that voice says

why me? why me?

(Not meant self pityingly, rather, a hard truth.)

Papier-mache

They said, keep the blinds drawn, what we have to say, isn’t good

they lay her down on a white sheet and beneath, the hammered metal hummed

the bulb in the middle of the room, behind linoleum, sung a hissing song

their white-coated pluck and scratch, indifferent and sterile, she was just, flesh and blood

another in a long line of patients who, largely were forgotten, consumed by a machine, uncaring of individual

she could feel the dried corners of her eyes crack, as she looked left and right

someone once told her, adult survivors of abuse, find it hard to relax

they are always looking for what is crawling out of cupboards

she didn’t want her past to run her future, but now it seemed, her future was in doubt

never before had she felt so alone

the petty bravery of moving countries, seemed a facile thing, for children who didn’t yet know, true terror

surely it is easy to be brave when you have no war, and are just posting letters

she lived like that for so long, running from childhood’s sadness, enjoying the wide open space of adulthood

thinking she had all the time in the world, surely growing older was for another life

it wasn’t entirely selfish, she did her part, but there was always the tendency to want to make up for the past, by living without a care

and then it was no longer that way

impossible to ignore, unable to let go of, she was swiftly consumed and irrevocably changed

even if tomorrow the cloud lifted, she would never walk as lightly as she used to

the power of naivety, ignorance is surely, our dearest friend

now her heart beat fast all the time, unable to still, the surge of emotions inside

she was a rabbit in her burrow, smelling fox

she was no longer the quick silver of a girl, without terrible knowledge

days were unbearably long, and serious, like the frown on an old man’s face

they spoke of compromise, a series of steps, faltering and bursting apart and trying over

it was as if all of her was removed and pummelled into earth and made to rise again

never was it more silent, never did she wish for the phone to ring and something to let her out of the nasty trap with jagged mouth

words are just words, she could have said; I am strong, I am going to fight, but in the next breath she may

simply not be able

and that lack of, that inability, like a prison, or a sudden dismemberment, was, a kind of horror she’d never been creative enough to imagine

like being stolen from yourself, and hearing in the distance, the sound of children dancing

to your favorite song

if life is indeed a battle, she thought, this is where I need to buckle down

put aside my tendency to want to climb out of the window and skip the lesson

stifle the longing to run fast, in the opposite direction

everything so far, had brought her to this point, it wasn’t what she’d imagined

instead, she’d hoped by now, she’d have found her groove, begun as humans tend, to build her fortress

it wasn’t time yet, it wasn’t nearly time yet

and all the days she’d squandered, thinking there would be more

all the long drawn out machinations, to position herself and be ‘responsible’

denying the lustre of living

she’d put off joy so many times, in favor of ‘sensible choices’

where were those now? She berated herself for not having taken

more vacation, more experiences, that glass of wine, danced on that table top

she worked for a future, she may never get to experience, sure she felt bitter, angry at her lack of insight

though most believe, we’re never ready for bad news or, the fall of favor

we think we predict worst case scenario but that’s only an anxious mind

seeking to control the uncontrollable and unknown

nothing prepares you for a premature curtain fall

nothing shores you up to deal with catastrophe

we muddle through or we give up

those are the only two ways we journey

when the wet-ass hour comes tolling

she felt a grief for her bad choices and wished, like others she could have no regrets

it is hard not to regret when you’re cut off from everything

difficult to look forward when the present is biting at your ankles

she wasn’t one to pray for herself

but she did now

she prayed for the strength she felt she didn’t have

she prayed not to feel so isolated

cried thinking of how many before her, went through this darkness alone, their hearts aching to be cared for

she was a little girl again, looking for her mother beneath furniture

seeing her in album covers and from the top of buses

that woman had her mother’s eyes, large and dark

that lady’s figure is slim and reedy like her mother’s was

at night she wanted to feel the way she imagined a child does

put to bed and told, everything is well, you are safe

if she’d had children, she’d be saying it to them now

but life threw her a curve-ball and she ended up reproducing only

empty rooms collecting dust

perhaps it was for the best, now that she’d sunk so low

for how could she care for anyone, when she could not for herself?

if everything has a reason, she wasn’t sure of this

to teach her gratitude? To punish her for lassitude?

if there was a God she hoped, somehow to end her suffering, even by means of eternal sleep

but she felt bad for praying when so many, suffered far worse than her, and how they coped, she did not know

only that she had to try each day to keep going, in what direction was unclear

she wasn’t sure of the sign-posts or meaning, it was too easy to let fear, guide her way

so many things needed to change and yet, she was tired, so tired of fighting and being scared

they say those brought up unkindly, learn to be strong

she didn’t feel strong at all, she felt like only a thin wind, kept her from collapsing

and all her plans were thrown in water, watching the ink bleed out, with nothing left to find, but papier-mache

her grandmother once told her, out of nothing you can build, entire universes

she tried now to imagine a place, where she would be restored

where all the things she still had to do, remained possible

surely you can tell when, the end of the record is over and, it’s about to go quiet

she hadn’t been able to, she’d one day been carrying her dancing shoes, across the newly waxed floor, her eyes feverish with anticipation

and the next, swallowed by sickness, left without curative

only the static of a cold room and a script for patience

she’d been spat out of the system, left to flounder by road-side

how different, she thought, from childhood where, we do everything to protect them from fear

sewing toys that will keep them company at night

mobiles to send them to sleep, songs to ward away nightmares

and at some eventual point, we decide they’re ready for the real world

full of savagery and disregard and people who are supposed to help

but are only doing the bare minimum

is it any wonder we flounder, and miss a step?

looking around in wide-eyed fear

mouthing the unasked question

is this what it feels like, to be real?