Once, all at once, I saw it all

When I listen to the world,
besides the never ending ringing in my ears
and the air vents vibrating the room
and my dog having a dream
and the microwave telling my mother her leftovers are done
and the cuckoo clock ticking in the front hall
and my fingers plunking away and scratching my chest
and the air rushing in my lungs and out
and the birds outside the window
and all the other noises these sounds are drowning out:
is it silent? No. The world is not silent.
The world is telling us what needs doing, all the time.
Learn, and Listen
with ears
with eyes
with closed mouths
with open mouths--
the music of it all,

the cacophony. The dissonant humming
making its way
in through our ear canals
up into our brains and
down into our hearts
where it echoes like lost love
as it grieves its own death
and rejoices in its new birth.

Once, all at once,
I saw it all.
All at once.
Crying and laughing and crying and laughing
louder and louder against
the wind and the darkening clouds while the ground gets ready
the tide creeping up carrying messages from the deep sea
the moonrise a year in the making:
the empty moon, blacked out and hollow like
an empy heart
ready to be filled.

That is how the world answers me
when I ask
What do you need?
Your heart.
Your heart.
Your heart.

full moon got me like...

Maaaaan, this full moon cycle is hitting me really hard. Not sleeping well, and the waning hours of daylight are heavy and depressing. Lethargy is pulling my body around my house while I wait for something to lift. Depression isn't just mental, it's deeply physical. Mostly in my stomach. Body aches. Disembodiment cloud of fog. I am here.

Just last week I got great news from my transplant doctor: basically I'm doing really well physically. I've stopped my immuno-suppressant drug; which I have been on for over three years. It was what was keeping my new immune system at bay until it got used to living inside my body, a foreigner. I'm lucky that I am able to get off of this drug- any other type of transplant, you have to be on anti-rejection drugs for the rest of your life and you will always be immuno-suppressed. Mine's a special case: since I got my immune system replaced, there is a chance that I would be able to get off the drug eventually. And, hooray. It's happened. It is no small thing. I've been off of it for a couple months now, and none of my organs are shutting down.  It is no small thing.

I'm grateful. My doctor actually smiled at me, told me: "You don't need us anymore" and then gave me a hug. It is no small thing. As I hugged him in his white coat; I said "thank you" and it felt like I was actually thanking him for saving my life, for the first time. I didn't need to say anything else. I couldn't, really. Just "thank you."

I just performed in a movement piece a couple weekends back- after devising the show for two months. It was incredible to be in my body for the first time and feel like it somewhat belonged to me. It's been a long time since I've felt that way. I loved performing. It is no small thing. I really didn't know, until now, that I love performing. That I need to do that.

I performed a heartbreaking physical theatre show four times in a single night: cried through most of it as I embodied a girl growing up, getting caught up into sex trafficking and drugs, having an internal war with herself and finally finding an arm up, which was from inside her. It doesn't end happily. It ends hopeful, I guess. But it was where the real work began. The end was the beginning.

Getting to the point of embodying the headspace of trauma was not what was difficult. I have a well to draw from. We all do. The hardest part was that exact realization. There is no other. We all embody trauma. The woman I embodied was me. It was you. Your daughter. Your sister. My sister.

I was overcome after creating this work (and discovered even more while performing it) of the strength once again of human beings. This woman, this one story we told through movement, is the story of strength. It isn't the story of pity, or the story of weakness. It is the story of bravery. No one is immune to trauma- internal and external. What amazed me was embodying this woman who went through most of her life hating herself, disembodying, disassociating. But in the end, her liberation came from within her. She had to choose to get out. She made the move to do it. Every single time we got to the end of the show, there is a reveal- and even though I knew- actor-brain-wise what was going to be revealed... I was shocked every single time. Honestly, earnestly and authentically. I didn't feel I was acting. I was embodying. I've never had this experience before. Not like this.

So here I am, approaching the end of 2016: job searching, a totaled car, lethargy and depression steeping in me like earl grey. And yet. This time last year I had recently been released from the hospital after one of the most dehumanizing experiences of my life; depressed and entering the literal darkness of this time of year. I am not her anymore. I am a year older, wiser. I see what is happening to me- the full moon or whatever it is, and I can call it out on its' shit. I see you, depression. You are not me. You are not who I am. You try to own me sometimes, but you don't. And that is no small thing.

Approaching this new year with a curiosity. I have almost no idea what will happen in the future. Job searching is lonely and difficult, but I am also just curious. What WILL happen?

I'm lucky to have what I have. I have a body that is still alive, for better or for worse (bit of both). I have discovered what I am meant for: theatre. performance. directing. devising. writing. creating. Not everyone can say either of these things. I am lucky. It is no small thing.

So, full moon: effing bring it. I'm gonna put on my running shoes and leave the house today, even though most of me is saying no, just curl up and die. I'm gonna put on music that inspires me to be a better human. I will be unafraid to read or think things that make me cry or feel overwhelmed by the idea of the world. Beauty and Terror in everything, is everything. Because feeling these things reminds me that I am alive. And that is no small thing.

To the man on the Beverly bridge

11.25.16 

As my car approached you, surrounded by flashing red and blue lights

I knew something was wrong.

We didn't know yet, until halfway across the bridge

And there you were: grey hoodie

your caved yet rigid figure

standing on the bridge railing- 

Grasping the streetlight pole

like a life vest

But delicately- only one arm wrapped around--

You were ready to let go.

Even though your head was down

hidden

And I couldn't see your face.

As my car took me across the bridge on the opposite side

I cried for you

I cried for you to know

That I love you.

I prayed to a Jesus I don't know exists for you

I cried out loud 

My tearless, painful cry

With weight in my heart and stomach

That everything happens at once

Everything is happening at the same time 

A baby was born every second you stood there

In the cool damp air

Your hand icy wrapped around the pole

A soul left a body every second you stood there

Your mother thinking of you

Loving you unconditionally

No matter where she is or was.

A mother cannot un-love her child.

It's a one-way street, no backing out of it

No matter what happens

No matter what goes wrong

No matter how many times she fucks up

She will love you

Unconditionally.

And my car passed you, also 

just

happening.

And I cried for you

I wanted to scream at god

I wanted to hold your cold hands

in the damp night

I wanted to cry real tears 

for once in my damned life-

But the universe doesn't make many choices.

It just exists.

And so do we- for a mere moment

a second--

Just long enough to matter to someone else.

Just long enough to matter

to someone else.

I do not know what happened to you.

I don't know if the 12 cop cars did any good.

I don't know that I can face the morning news if you decided to let go.

When I drove back across the bridge several hours later,

You were gone.

The lights were gone.

As if nothing had happened.

It almost didn't occur to me to think of it, The silt of it still clogging my brain

But even so, I drove quickly past like I have done

So many times before tonight

And I didn't think of you

Until now, 

Lying in my bed

Wondering about you,

Crying for you

Closing my eyes looking for you

Your figure burned in my mind

You hooded stranger

Who knows exactly what it feels like to be human.

I share this experience with you; unwillingly it seems

And with so many others:

We're a tiny spoke in a huge wheel spinning out of control down a metaphorical mountain of an endless universe-

How can any of it matter?

But you remain here, in this moment, in my bed as I live for you: alive.

And your life matters to me, if it is over or not

It matters to me.

I am lying here and 

You matter to me.

You and I share

that darkness

Standing on the railing

The late autumn night sea air drenching your grey sweatshirt

And chilling every molecule in your body

Until there is no feeling left besides 

A lacking

That empty silence of a soul in mourning

For what it's lost: itself.

The hardest part is the hopelessness.

How can any of it matter?

The answer is not discovered.

The answer is created.

It does not matter. I am a tiny thing amongst billions of other tiny things

Amongst billions of enormous things

Black holes and red giants

Expanding space

Uncharted sea depths

Parallel universes

Where one of us has chosen to let go-

And one of us has chosen to take the hand down

To hold life like a plain face,

No charming smile, no violet eyes

And say: I will love you, again.

I don't know which iteration of the universe I am living in-

But I love you

You matter to me.

Novemer 9, 2016 pt.2

There is something heavy about today.
The atmosphere is moody, holding its breath;
afraid to let go because the unholy sound
might break the world.

The clouds are pregnant with water
ready to crack open and are
looming darkly with the crowning
of a new era, again and again and again and again

I am afraid. I am afraid for Decency
I am afraid for Compassion
I am afraid for Empathy
I am afraid for Forgiveness
I am afraid for Love

that they will be snuffed out
crushed under the the weight of hatred
drowned out by the chanting of warfare
trampled by the storming indifference
strangled by the weeds of anger
burned by the arson of otherness
buried by despondence.

How do we continue to seek Decency?
How do we enact Compassion?
How do we entreat Empathy
to be a part of a world that
so often exiles her?

Come back to us, Forgiveness.
Flow back over us, Love.
Let the clouds split open and pour
over us and wash our eyes
to see that

We need you, more than ever.

November 9, 2016

Early this morning, history began a new chapter.
Many people are weeping. Many people are angry.
Many people are crying out from all sides wondering
how we are who we are; why we are who we are-
and just as wordless: Who are we?
Why are we?

But I walked to the ocean,
I sat by the ocean,
on a rock by the ocean
this morning,
carrying my heavy heart down to the water.

With every wave the ocean spoke:
"I am still here,"
Then a deep breath in- the pulling
back of the tide, then-
"I am still here,"

There is a comma there, a pause
Just enough for a breath in and a
breath out
And with each exhale the voice kept saying,
"I am still here,"
I started to breathe with her
Over and over and over

Sometimes loud, very loud, with a
booming voice and many white
bubbles breaking
over the piles of seaweed and
spraying tears up over the rocks.
The sucking of air afterwards was just as chaotic.

Sometimes though,
the exhale was soft;
Gaia God's fingers caressing
the infinitesimal rocks of her sand,
grazing the skin of her love
whispering,
"I am still here,"

little t's

I looked back one day

and instead of the dutiful structural wall

I expected to be standing, marking the path I had been walking

the past few years:

each stone set on a foundation of Truths

most little t’s, with some big T Truths

God is Love, and Love is Real-

But that day, whenever it was exactly,

I turned around and found a little gremlin

was smashing around making a mess of it all-

even the foundation stones were crushed.

I wept, grieved for a while.

I was angry some. Heaven disappeared

and god was a deepening mystery

I read philosophers.

Nietzsche has plenty to say

But so does Abraham Heschel

and how Wonder is all he ever asked for

and god gave it to him.

I take this back to my wall.

Caputo steeps in the weakness of god:

unstable, barely functional-

I take some of this back to my wall.

Grace Jantzen reminds me that Deconstruction

is a way to reconstruction.

I take this back to my wall.

I wrestle with the gremlin for a year or two,

then decide to take a break because it’s exhausting

spending every moment in existential skepticism

and I’m just tired, damnit

god damnit.

yes, god, damn it, please.

If you’re there, if you have any power left

damn it.

and I’m just gonna take a break

and if that’s okay with you,

I’m gonna just let this go for now

so I can start breathing normally.

I go from being angry

inside the eternal dark night of my Kierkegaard-ian soul

waiting for the rubble to make itself a wall again, to pave itself

ahead of me, and

getting angry when it didn't—

To just letting the world happen to me;

listening to the words of poets

Who have long gone before me-

“Beyond our ideas of right-doing and wrong-doing,

there is a field. I’ll meet you there.” Rumi.

Who have known things closer than I could explain,

“Let everything happen to you; beauty and terror.

Just keep going. No feeling is final.” Rilke.

Who comforted me in my state,

“You only have to let the soft animal of your body

loves what it loves.” Mary Oliver.

Music saved me. Theatre is my Church. Art is my prayer.

Words have so much power if you let them.

So let them.

And then, one day, you may find yourself

asking those small, eternal questions again;

the wall crumbly but giving it a go-

the gremlin tamed and even cuddly. And then

meekly, like a child whispering in her mother’s ear:

“I love you,” to which she responds

“I loved you first.”

On Growing

1

it feels like cold liquid metal climbing your neck

sealing off airways

solidifying your upper vertebrae

and brain stem into a

silver statue

while your jaw spasms

tilting your head backward until all you can see is up

muscles tightening, backing into a dim corner

and it goes dark.

Sometimes it’s just for a moment-

I’m sitting on the stairs in front of the kitchen door

shoes on, ready to go

but something invisible grips me

and I can’t move my body

Sometimes it’s for a long time- days even.

Laying still, crooked but frozen,

a week of night sweats still in my sheets

as the only protection I have from facing myself

and the possibility of the world.

it makes breathing hard, burning like that

it makes you sink into the floor like lava--

the kind you’d avoid as a kid

hopping couch cushions and chairs--

is now what your body is made of.

disappear, wane, vanish, seep away

and every other word or phrase

I can think of to describe

that darkness

and what it makes my head do

I just want to dissipate, dissolve,

disappear--

and then, light.

I can’t explain it

it’s my mothers’ arms

it’s naming green objects in the room

it’s the final slam of the door

or my face on the floor

sobbing into the grass and then

turning over to the sun in my face.

remembering love

remembering breathing

remembering light. life. living.

Remembering beauty and terror.

both things

inseparable

two sides of the same coin

the back and palm of your hand

the curve and the concave

the wave and the particle light

the ultimate paradox

the only thing I call

Truth.

2

There are many things I wish I could do

dance professionally

grow as many botanicals as I wanted

decide the weather

I have my poor-man’s version of my dreams:

I work and stretch my muscles every day

I have a large assortment of herbs growing and

bundles hanging around the house

drying for tea as autumn settles into my stomach.

but I ache to be the best version of myself.

whatever she is.

I dream of her, see visions of her

sometimes catch glimpses of her:

early mornings with coffee and my dog outside

watching her discover every single leaf in the yard

and carry it triumphantly over to me.

I should treasure my possessions

like she does:

delight in every single leaf in the yard.

My lemon catnip tea from my garden

and my bundles of lavender hanging

upside down.

Be in awe of my body holding on through waves

that can crush bodies alive.

To stand in awe, that here, she is:

in the mirror, post-anxiety attack

after crying or anger or joy

after laughing with friends or burning a candle

to look her in the eye

to stand in awe of her

of that version of me;

no better than five-minute ago me

no worse either,

and say

She

is the best version

of me.

3

I came home today with

a bundle of oregano that took two hands to carry inside

a fistful of thyme, a skirt-full of lemon catnip,

a fortune of lavender blossoms and four tomatoes.

There are still five bell peppers swelling

and three dark purple eggplants dropping slowly

from their leafy perches

and still a forest of curly kale.

The squash leaves are withered

and the sunflowers stand their mournful

beautiful ground

only their eyes saw the summer bees

and bunnies

playing in my garden.

They are echoes, those large heads

stalks three fingers wide

of the former days

of early Spring leaning graciously into Summer

I think of my own cycle, echoing the seasons-

echoing the sunflower heads bowed

some of my stems broken; petals brown and dried

like tissue paper.

I was tall, once. Bending towards the sun

I was majestic; colorful; fuel for the bees’ sacred mission--

and I am now cold, dry, like tissue paper

and just as defenseless. Susceptible to water,

damage, fire, frost.

But inside me

are echoes of those summer heads:

ideas floating like bursts of life

the many seeds of new lives that are coming

and one day, I too

will dig deep my feet

and grow again.

to my unborn children

When you hold your baby,

when you look into her eyes and

she looks back without an ounce of fear and you know 

when you hold her

you hold your grandchildren

and your great grandchildren

the whole world, really

because what else is there except

to make meaning out of our loves

to find delight at every new word

to see your own face reflected in hers

to feel the summer earth beneath your bare feet

to hear laughter and crying

to laugh and cry and scream and be sleepless and elated

all together and

too close together for it to mean nothing.

So you make it mean something.

You say aloud to yourself

so you won't forget

I will rise above this pain, I will rise.

I will

choose love over indifference, I will

be surprised by small things

delighted and inspired

by fingers and elbows and

the smell of her baby hair and

the taste of the first snowflake and

heartbeats and the way the afternoon light is

just so across the living room floor—

These things, you will tell your child,

are the stuff of dreams. Here, god. Here, Love. This

is living, this

house, this soul place where your 

heart can lie down

without an ounce of fear; this

is where meaning is made.

Not discovered like gravity-

that was hidden: there all along until

the apple fell--

but instead: created, whole and real

and new in

one step, one sip, one tooth, one root, 

one breath at a time

again and again every day

until the end of time

which is god 

which is unending

which is eternal

which is how long I will love you.
 

Three years: Weeds are flowers, too, once you get to know them.

Yesterday marked three years since I was told I had cancer.

Thoughts and words borrowed from many references, and I thank you for them.

1

Other than those two roads diverging in the yellow wood

one leading one way, the other another 

I don't believe in judgement day 

with the heavenly armed forces

pulling you up or pushing you down.

Other than those roads in the yellow wood-

what paths are before us?

It's the same woods and the same earth, the same

fiber holding it all together- those tiny atoms pulling and pushing

for or against, that gravity

of an eon echo burst that cast us out sideways

from hydrogen into

whatever we are.

It’s just legroom we scuffle about in

existence is so fragile:

temperature and speed all just so,

any more or less and we’d still be the unadorned element

H

Space is a precarious place.

There are stars burning who’s light won’t reach earth before I die.

The sun may have just exploded, just now

and in 8 minutes and 20 seconds

everything will change.

and yet somehow,

stay exactly the same

trivial, a clump of atoms inside a Red Giant and

burning until there's nothing left but void. 

It's all the same woods.

And we won’t know what’s beyond these trees

till we get there.

2

Shuffles and shambles to survive, while I 

struggle to figure out 

what that means anymore. Is it

carrying my bones to and from my bed? Is it

the space between griefs? Is it

holding a chive blossom in my hand?

Watching the sparrows fight at the feeder?

Pouring coffee?

Some days it’s too much, it's too much of

just crushing these goddamned osteo-lugnuts

rusted shut, full of shit made

in a factory somewhere

I lie half awake

Panic is my predator and she has her way with me.

I am food for Dangerous, Despondency, Despair

I have nowhere to hide

No more good face, no more God face

no more comfort that this will actually turn out okay

as I watch on like a horror film:

"Don’t go up to the attic. DON'T GO UP TO—"

But she goes anyway. See, the script is written this way

because the bard say

“All the world’s a stage,

And all the men and women merely players;

They have their exits and their entrances”

But it’s the exits,

it’s the exits that are final.

3

The basil's spicy scent still on my

hands

and the marigold petals will begin

to light up our summer salads.

I’m peering like a four year old,

peeking fingers through the fence,

waiting for the beets to sprout, as they should

while I look on

They whisper, "Nothing doing. I don't belong to you.

I am not your play thing. I am the great earth."

Majesty is happening under ground, and

I have to praise that.

I must give thanks unto

the worms, the feeders in the dark

who quietly, discreetly, till the soil and nourish

while nearby seeds also quietly, discreetly, creep out of their casing

and push with noiseless childbearing cries and

bear down into deep roots, reach arms up in love to the sun

To the bees committing their altruistic ritual:

"Serve the world, serve the world."

I must give praise to these little ones,

inside my doubt, inside despair

Inside the death and death and death of cells

Inside cancer, hunger, murder and space

the unending explosions of atoms: 

Praise.

To the mustard, the broccoli sprout,

the fruits of the great earth.

I've started writing haikus. they are not very good

again and again

bringing on this firestorm

deep and deep and deep

Well I got out of the hospital on Wednesday. My muscle spasms ramped up Sunday night, after the weekend of feeling my body start to fail. It’s hard for me to write about it, I’m sort of in a daze from it all still, what a bizarre week. This is not an accurate timeline of events, but more of the emotional journey of this week, just so you know. I have no idea what I am about to write.

When I get to the ER Sunday night, my spasms haven’t calmed down at all; which is odd because it’s usually how it goes, right? Your car is making a weird noise for weeks but as soon as you get to the mechanic, finally, it’s mysteriously silent. And so it usually goes for me and the ER. But this time they haven’t magically disappeared and I am in crippled agony huddled in a huge wheelchair in the waiting room, coughing and coughing and like, holding back my entire lung in my mouth and trying to not make too much noise but the contractions in my abdomen hands and legs makes me feel like a rabid animal. I am a wild drooling coughing nutcase but I don’t care because survival mode does weird things to you.

Everyone else in the waiting room disappears, I focus on trying to keep some semblance of sanity. I plead into my mother’s eyes afraid crying with all my energy begging trying to stay conscious and not fall into the abyss. The TV is trying to sell us some miracle cleaner or maybe it is golf or election projections what’s the difference, I’m clutching the left side of the gigantic wheelchair for my life, trying to keep my lungs inside my body and my body from breaking into multiple quivering pieces.

Finally I’m wheeled into a room and get IV Dilaudid, which is the only thing I want. And then as the drug spreads very literally up my arm and across my chest like a green-screened heat wave on the news, like the oozing radiating warmth of a double shot of whiskey; my body begins to loosen and I fall limp and cozy. In this moment I understand completely why people crave this feeling; it’s like being a baby again and your only responsibility is sleeping after being tucked into a warm swaddling cloth. Nothing else matters. I just want to sleep until it is over.

At first it appears that I have pneumonia, even though the chest X-ray looks decent; the CT scan shows some weird stuff in my right lung that confirms what my doctor heard earlier this week. Around 3am I’m moved upstairs and admitted. They put me on IV antibiotics and my spasms seem to be staved off for the time being, maybe there’s more Dilaudid I don’t know. The nurse sticks long ass q-tips all the way up my nose and jabs my swollen sinuses three times. It hurts like F but my eyes don’t tear because they can’t. Gotta check for Flu and MRSA.

These beds are the worst. I truly wonder to myself in my half-lucid moments how I spent months sleeping on these plastic valleys. I can’t get comfortable but Percocet is helping.

Coughing. Coughing. No Flu no MRSA.

I have two IVs, one in each inner elbow, which makes it practically impossible to move so I now have Barbie arms. I can’t drink anything or move so they take out one and move the other to the top of my wrist. I am at that point of my life story where I am asking for IVs to be moved. I voluntarily ask for more needles. Who is this girl.

I don’t know what day it is, I’m feeling a bit better, but the macaroni and cheese I ordered has surprise tuna in it. I am asked if I want to try ordering it again from the kitchen, as if somehow this one won’t have surprise tuna.

Okay it’s morning and now I’m coughing again, and though the spasms are not too bad anymore, I am afraid I am drowning and I would actually choose muscle spasms over this. I can’t believe I am actually thinking this to myself, spasms are like my bones are breaking, but not being able to breathe is much more terrifying in this moment. I can barely take a sip of air between lung overhauls. At best I feel like I can fill only the top three inches of my lungs, there is just no more space for air.

My head is itchy. My whole body is itchy. I am starting to feel really feverish. I crawl out of my plastic valley bed and creep to the bathroom mirror. My face and chest are the color of cough syrup, and I feel the heat coming off my body in my hands hovering 4 inches away. It’s getting worse. I feel I am on fire. My nurse stops the IV antibiotics, maybe I’m having an allergic reaction. My throat is shrinking like a smaller and smaller straw. There’s Benadryl. A cool washcloth that turns hot after thirty seconds of contact with my face. Trying to keep anxiety low because it will only make this worse. Finally my face starts cooling, and my airways start widening again.

Almost immediately NEWSFLASH THERE’S A DEER TICK ON MY HIP. Gut instinct makes me pull at it to get it off but it holds on and I can see it squirming its tiny disgusting legs. This sends me into full on panic attack. Trying to breathe into the three little inches my lungs are affording me. OMG get it off OMG get it off OMG get it off get it off. Thank god my nurse is able to get it off cleanly with tweezers but now I feel sick.

We switch to oral antibiotics so I don’t turn into a burning raspberry.

I was supposed to get out today but I’m staying another night. Damnit.

Another X-Ray, and an ultrasound of my kidneys and bladder for who knows why. Apparently they have on file that I have chronic kidney/bladder issues, which is inaccurate. I have no idea. Glad the ultrasounds are find tho?

They get my meds right for the first time this morning. Every single time I get meds something is missing or the wrong dose. Yesterday I took the wrong dose (as in, 4x what my dose actually is) of Gabapentin and Quinine (cue hearing loss: hello from under water for hours) so I am now vigilant to the meds and dosages. The pills all look different in the hospital so it’s hard to do the mental checklist, but today, it was correct on the first try. Praise Jehovah.

I’m getting nebulizer treatments now; the pulmonologist has a loud warm voice and caring presence. The albuterol neb makes me so shaky I am visibly trembling for a few hours after each one. But I can breathe deeper than I have been able to in days.

It seems I do not really have pneumonia, but rather the stuff showing up in the CT scan is probably a flare-up of my lung GvHD caused by some viral infection they can’t really treat. It just has to run its course. They keep me on precautionary antibiotics just in case. Thankfully my spasms have slowed down considerably.

My nephew is here, he is telling me about the bad bugs that get into your blood, and that they need to send the good bugs to kill the bad bugs. I am amazed at how well he understands these things. He talks for about five solid minutes without any pauses and finishes his lecture with “So you just have to get a laser-blanket to kill the bad ants on your bed.” Sign me up for a laser-blanket.

My hot water with lemon was actually hot this morning! What providence! But no matter how much I drink I still have a desert for a mouth and throat.

I am getting ready to go home: here’s a folder with 50 sheets of paper describing in three different ways which medicines I’m taking and when. I will have a nebulizer machine delivered to my house today.

I get home and immediately crumble. The setback of a hospital stay is suddenly immeasurable, and as soon as that survival mode wall comes down, the exhaustion and anger waiting on the other side bursts through with full force. I am angry and depleted. It defies explanation.

I am sad, I am hurting, I am sorry. I want to crawl to a place of non-existence. I want to give my feeble chance at life to someone else. I am tired of the hurting, I want to disappear.

I am sorry. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I am saying this over and over in my head as I cry my wheezy tearless whimpers, covering my face asking for this to be over. I cry for Ian. It’s arbitrary it’s illogical. It’s a mess. It makes no sense I can’t grasp it. I want to trade my life with someone who wants it more than I do. I want to give my life to Ian. I am so sorry I am causing my family pain. My mouth and throat are so dry and I am shaking and shaking. My hands spasm and it feels they will break themselves into splintery bits.

I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I should live for you, I should want to live for you because you couldn’t. You had no choice, you had to leave. I am left here with a crippled body driven by pills and depression; I’ll never do anything I’ll never get out. I’m sorry. I want to live for you because you couldn’t. I want to live for you but I hate this life.

I am afraid.

Mental exhaustion takes over the wheel and I am despondent. I can’t move. I am lying sideways across my bed or sitting in a chair. I am coughing up shit from my flailing lungs. I am hungry but I cannot eat. I cannot feel much, if I let myself it feels like I will die. So I don’t.

My mother is scared, and I’m sorry I can’t talk. I’m sorry I can’t move. It’s not a choice.

My mother reads to me and I sleep for a long time. Every time I am wracked with gruesome and emotionally taxing nightmares. My depression rages in my dreams and it lingers when I wake up. I know they are just dreams but it wreaks havoc on my mental state.

I am afraid I will not get to my goals. I am afraid that this is the rest of my life; I am the space between ER visits; losing ground with every bad day, stumbling further and further behind the starting line. I want to be doing things, I want to be working. I feel guilty. I want to dance. But the war zone of my body is a baited trap and who knows what today will look like.

I’m a slave to medicine. I have three different nebulizer treatments. One of them I’m supposed to do every six hours, the second one twice a day, the third one as needed. So basically a full-time job with that and my other 25+ pills a day. I am getting less shaky with every neb treatment so, progress.

I write so I may be free. It seems to be one of the only places I can find these days, even though what I’m trying to describe is an incoherent nightmarish fiend. I also write this with some small hope that one day I will look back on this 

and not be this any more.

so I may be free

the earth turns.

and so I wait, patiently sometimes

other times,

crumpled on the floor

crying

cursing

craving

death

also life.

it doesn’t make sense, but

I don’t see how it could, really

one day in the middle of it,

climbing the steps, crushing darkness but

the next gutted on the floor

the next slamming my head on anything hard

with aluminum solidifying my lungs and creeping

up my neck; it means to do me in-

next rounding the bend

then waiting

waiting

I don’t know why. It

doesn’t make sense.

the earth turns.

That veil, vaguely painted

in the minds of some people

the other side of the door

others: a dark cavern open mouth swallowing thoughtlessly

or a beam of light

or a wisp of smoke from

a candle blown out.

It doesn’t make any sense

the birds are chirping and

daffodils are rising and falling

a pale robin’s blue shell burst on the ground, smeared

on the pavement, it’s baby yolk

intact, untouched

it’s mother wondering where it’s gone to

reminds me how close we are to life then death

how close we are to nonexistence.

It doesn’t make any sense

Earthquake after earthquake, what

now, four in one week? More?

Is it el Niño or is it the slow death

of the world

creeping up on us, finally

after it’s unhurried exhibition for the last century

following industry and heat and heat,

fossil fuels broken out off the mantle

causing our own kinds of earthquakes

for profit

for production

to employ people, quick, before it’s over—

and we won’t know,

when it’s over

because ceasing to be is very quick

that veil between us and them so

thin

not majestic

no choirs

we could have died a thousand time already

and had no idea.

the multi-verse singing its ever quiet song of enveloping galaxies

swallowing dark matter and stars whole like a python sick with a fully

skeletal rabbit. Filaments and superclusters and universes collide and

it’s anticlimactic. All the bad hard shitty stuff

already happened. It’s already happening

in front of our dumb-by-prolonged-exposure eyes

and even as we yell, “I!” like it matters

“I!” like it makes a difference. It doesn’t make

any sense, but

as winter turns to spring and

earthquakes shake the crust of the world

opening mouths for us to fall in,

while the earth catastrophically implodes--it

does not need us, for sure.

It does not need us.

It means 

to wash away the blunders of a parasitic malady;

to wipe our existence away, quick and efficient like a mother’s soft hand

wiping ice cream off her daughter’s face. It’s quick and virtuous

like the thousand times before this time, tired from years of no sleep

from the pain of birth to the pain of death, tenderly she holds

a wet cloth to mop up the mess we’ve made; her daughter’s face

a world of possibility, a planet just starting to spin:

and the tumult of a toddler learning

she can act on her own. But she’s sticky

with that pinkish anarchy, its melted remains: half ingested,

half plastered half dried down her chin, and

the mother will do her job,

the ocean will do it’s job

the trees will wilt and fall

the wind will carry on without a thought to us

age old must, rocks crushing into dust

the void, the galactic nuclei

screaming on and on in noiseless space

for thine is the kingdom the power the glory

forever and ever amen.