triptych temperature

Here's three pieces that pretty much sum up where my writing, and therefore: my head, has been lately.

---

Whether I follow a religion or just

observe these rituals as ways we seek Truth:

I am okay with that space.

I believe in a god-force. She- if I had to label a gender- is not

the wife of a nuclear family, silently vacuuming up our messes in her pearls.

She is active, moving, reeling through time and space.

She is Love embodied and Love unspoken. 

Omnicient, Omnipresent, Eternal, sure.

But She is not all-powerful.

She gave that up when She made this world

She gave that up when She gave us this earth

and the tools to destroy it.

She watches, She cries.

But She also handed me this aluminum can

filled me with fire,

and I’ll leave my rebel mark

graffiti colored Love

all over this broken down rock

and call it Beautiful.

— love rebellion, or: Break the F*cking Rules

---

I’m up to the ears—hairline— lord god I’m just fully underwater

with social media perfection

top-view portraits of world travelers’ brunch dates

hipster thick sliced toast, avocado roses

hashtag mimosas hashtag darlingweekend

soft pink and cream palettes and capsule wardrobes

air bnb wooden beam ceilings in mountains of Vermont

ivy covered doorways with baguettes

instagram mommas and instagram husbands,

babies and beach bods and growing up and isn’t it all

perfectly imperfect—

holy mother of little baby lord jesus christ I need a break.

need to spend my time apart from Interminable Comparison 

to find out what is here, what is still here:

who is still here.
 

— journey through Adult Assery

---

what sorts of things wait in that adult darkness?

it’s not creepy crawlies or tentacles under the bed-

it’s running that red light by accident,

it’s frowning at cellulite after years of self help books

it’s when we talk about love and you don’t believe in it

it’s Darkness, and only Darkness

it’s money troubles, it’s finding time, it’s cancer.

If I could get myself out

alone,

I would.

— I'm scared too, but we'll make it 




love,
bek

 
 

sing a sweet song of catharsis

a bit of barely-edited work I wrote in writing group the last two hours. It endlessly fascinated me how three different prompts yield three different works, but there always seems to be a through-line. I never know my brain until I start writing, and even then...

1

the tendrils of our roots

intertwine. I don’t know

what’s yours

and what’s mine.

but we’re stitched together,

you and I

bound up like dry twigs

ready to burn with the world.

2

I know you are there.

Sometimes you’re the bird, and I’m the cage

and sometimes we switch

I don’t know which I like more

to hold you, or to be held

3

these steps to my heart are small,

like rungs of a dollhouse ladder.

you can scurry up them

and get here quickly.

and just as swiftly

you may also leave

4

There are ancient scrolls that say

many great things

many great things

many terrible things

about the world

how it was made, how it died

while God flew over

and watched us burn the world

over and over and over

and over and over and over and over

----

I was really going there.

Those were the two sides you needed

and I, of course, had been all of those.

It’s a dirty place, scattered and

I don’t remember thinking

"she’s just lost her mind"

I just think:

most of the good things

toward the end

was a bit like love

I didn’t cry

the first time I saw it.

I didn’t go up with tears

in my eyes

I said “Mine.”

You hated me for that

and I thought it too.

You said ,

“You only get an exciting chase

once.”

I could hardly breathe

I was just part of the landscape

along with drugs and a big glass ashtray

turned upside down.

You sat on a glacier

snorting cocaine

and I quit until I became sober enough

for you to stitch me

together

I should have done it

differently.

--

the bird cried

the ice caps are melting!

the ice caps are melting!

into the sea!

into the sea!

I was aware once

of things that brought me joy

I used to know how to fade like a gradient

into the background of the party

and be happy enough there

the textures of people places and things

adjusting, scooching, scraping in such a way

to make the world a bright light

you could see from space.

I was known once, by a man

who knew my name that no one else did

he asked me

min qalbi? Who is my heart?

in broken Arabic I answered “ana” “I am.” 

ana

min eayni? Who is my eyes?

ana

min habbi? Who is my love?

ana habibi.

min rruhi? Who is my soul?

ana

ana

ana

Then,

You went away, I do not know you.

You disappeared, melted, sunk, drowned

like those ice caps

just as the bird said:

into the sea!

into the sea!

min habbi alan?

min habbi alan?
 

who is my love now?

You are only one, but you are not the only one.

Life is powerful. It can be
powerfully destructive:
tearing babes from mothers' chests
ripping through dead rain forests like a dragon
breathing fire
sucking dry
the oceans that feed us,
spreading famine of
tears that make us beating hearts;
spilling blood
on unholy ground
as the dying rivers cry
their songs of weariness--

But we
who rise from the ashes 
over and over again, 
dawning like a phoenix flecked with gold
after choking on the dust, after 
breaking every limb; 
climbing the spines of our own backs 
up again
and again
and again
racing our hearts to beat
faster, live longer,
love deeper.
 
We are the beauty of this world. 
We can 
claim that for ourselves and 
be beautiful and free, 
in spite of the slavery.

Wash yourself. Again and again.

Be beautiful.
Build your life
as if it were a work of art.
You fall, get back up. Be brave.
Tell your truth. Live.
This is what beauty is.
And you are a part of it.

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.
 

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.

"story of a scar"

I've recently joined an online writing group that meets weekly through Lacuna Loft. It's been really lovely so far- we are spread across the country, but join together for two hours every week on a video chat and write and share our work out loud. It's made me very aware that I should be more diligent in my writing, because I've been really inspired by our meetings together (of which there's only been two! So much fun already.) and it makes me want to spend more time every day just writing down my sputtering thoughts.

Here's a little clip. This is from a 12-ish minute writing block with the prompt: "story of a scar". The thing I value the most about our group so far is that we have a no-apology rule. You are not allowed to apologize for your writing. We know you wrote it five minutes ago; it's rough, messy, perhaps non-coherent. But it doesn't need any explanation. I love that. That's where inspiration comes alive. 

-------

hello my name is sort-of-Frankenstein. Well, if I’m completely honest with the pretentious English major part of me, I’d really be “Sort-of-Frankenstein’s-Monster”. But yeah, I have weird holes all over the place, and not just the ones you’re born with. I have new ones, drilled into me, deep and deep and things pulled out of me through a medical sippy cup straw. I have holes poked under the thin skin of my wrist and inner elbow, dark mark echoes of stabs from being fished like a salmon in a stream: wildly pushing against the current and pulling away from the hurt.

I have holes in my chest, two the size of bullets straight to my heart. I have knicks in my collar bone to remind me of that fishing wire. There’s plenty to look at, there’s plenty to answer a four-year-old’s question of “what is that” and “is your body better now?”

I don’t know. Because there’s more holes than just those. There’s holes everywhere. Every time I look in the mirror and see the dark circles of my eye sockets, the jutting bones of my cheeks and hollow shoulders. The enemy is defeated, I guess. But what’s left now is a mostly empty monks bowl of a girl, waiting for the generosity of some Samaritan to empty their pocket lint into me. I’m “Sort-of-Frankenstein’s-Monster”, a girl: blood’s enemy and life's eternal question. Are you alive? But how pretentious. Who are you to question what happens?

There are more holes than what you see. It’s been years of building and building, watching it crumble; building and building, watching it crumble. The enemy is defeated, I guess.

I feel like a crevice, a place between other places. Maybe water flows through me in the wet season if we’re lucky, but always slowly dries out like chalk in the next. I’m waiting for that current- either electric fire from my maker bringing me to life, or the water surge- where like a salmon, I’ll leap free into the air.

-b