the point is can you come up with anything in an hour, a half hour, in a minute? Can you come up with something worth writing, saying, in so much time. Can you come up with anything? Can you come up for air? Are you drowning? Can you come up for air?
I breathe and you leave. Our daughter turns in the night between us, careful, careful, each of us on edge, furthest away from each other with her between us. She turns in the night, one side to the next, arms out stretched, whisper fingers raking the air. Looking, grasping in the dark. Are you there mommy? Are you there daddy? She tosses and turns, scratch, scratch a back here, scratch, lightly, lightly, a face there. She tosses and turns, fitfully, throwing fits from side to side, restless and I cannot sleep any longer on this edge.
Scratch scratch. Scratch scratch. I’d like to be done with this. Is this all there is? It’s all seemed very dark, one long dark night punctuated with short bitter streaks of daylight. One year done, another four to go. I miss the sun. I miss you. The disconnect is profound and sharp in relief that I cannot find any relief any where.
Monthly Archives: October 2004
pathetic and empowering
at some point it has to be enough, I am vomiting again and I feel a relief from it, from a certain kind of bloating that surrounds my life, insulates me from living.
I’m vomiting again and it’s ugly with sticky veins of saliva between my mouth and the toilet bowl and it’s a relief because a little bit of pressure is eased, one hand steadying the porcelain and my knees pressing tile and it’s enough to get through the night, enough to want to go about it a little longer, just a bit more, I’m vomiting again to get the edge off my inertia, to get off, to ease the bloat.
I can understand the appeal of defeating my body this way, feeding it, stuffing it, then ripping it out. I can sense the danger in this, I can feel the measure of satisfaction it brings, I can see myself wanting it more. It’s grotesque and wonderful, pathetic and empowering.
I am broken in ways that I can never repair.
And he felt that he was filling up a place other than where he was, as if he was filling up some other aspect of someone he didn’t necessarily want to be, and he was leaking, leaking by dregs, by chunks. He stood over the toilet bowl and carefully, with one hand, teased away the remaining saliva that tethered him to the seat cover. With the other hand he furiously unrolled toilet paper and wiped his face, his shirt -specks of vomit had back splashed- even his hair. Partly anxious and ambivalent, he felt a sense of accomplishment. Something got done tonight, if not his work.