the question is, can you be broken (again)?
what horseshit. tired and livid. the sand beneath the foundation, jack hammer through what you though was forever and only and inch between you and the flood. all floods. how about that jack. it came all apart and you were at your father’s throat under the impression that he wasn’t doing enough and that ever sore tender spot that he never really understood you or appreciated you or saw your gift. irony: a mother who thought you were capable of anything but wouldn’t let you ever really try and find out and a father who simply couldn’t quite accept that everything that mattered to you, mattered at all.
and perhaps it was that seething-ness that ruptured everything else when the power was out and the basement was flooded and the garbage piled up on your curb like useless sandbags after the damage had already been done.
Category Archives: words
where’s the comma in that?
stutter, stutter, full step, full trip, an eyeball twisting about, where’s the comma in that?
and parallels: a dog chewing the scruff of its neck, a vague release, an itch about to be scratched but somehow lost in the translation.
great walls and pit falls, a wisp of hair caught between lips and a cough that interrupts deep sleep. I’ve always been lost at this point, where the exits become further apart and names have become numbers.
she says beds are for sleeping and not much else, a sour note that hints at aggravation and disappointment and I twist and turn and squirm and I am four again where all I heard was the sound of her weeping and him falling asleep soundly exhausted and satisfied and vile.
this is so inappropriate. she would say that. this isn’t fit for writing.
Girl Practicing; Boy Cut Up
she plays next to me, hesitant and proud, cautious but prideful: she’s gotten somewhere with this piece, she knows some secret about it, she knows how to get there.
and she plays next to me as i write, a shy confidence building with each repetition: i can hear her little breaths, a slight cold but fingers dancing, stumbling but finding themselves again, righting themselves, moving forward, beginning again. a spiral, she’s spiraling outward and possibly away. departure.
and my boy yesterday, my boy today. it was as if nothing happened. slighty sore but walking about. rotating specialists came in checking and double checking: why are we here today, who are we here for, how do you spell your last name. and each time a little further, from one room to the next, from one stage to the next, spiraling closer, honing in. arrival.
after the pediatric surgeon explained the problem, the procedure, the afterwards of what should happen, he asked: any questions for me and i turned to him and said, where do you live. of course: silliness, useless sense of over-protectiveness that would be impotent and frail in the face of any real sort of tragedy.
i didnt get to hold his hand when he went under. i gave that to mari, let her have that. so hard to give that up.
by the time they led us back to him after, he was already awake, cranky but focused. he didnt want us to talk to him. not in pain exactly but uncomfortable with the pins and needleness of being numb where they cut him. he didnt want any overt affection or concern for him. he didnt want us looking at him, embarassing him. he wanted all that worry to be put somewhere else, anywhere else.
as the final wisps of tha anesthesia wore off, he was anxious to be home again. the nurse told him to eat just a little more of his icey. he nodded sweetly but the minute she turned, he frowned and dug the pastic spoon in the blue icey with a ferociousness. i’m down with this place, i’m outta here.
when we got home, he went about his usual routine: rubbing the dog’s nose, circling around the living room asking for a snack, heading downstairs to play the Wii. no whining, no complaints. he was worse in the morning, constant whine and moan about his hunger, his thirst, his hunger. after the surgery and now, the next day, just a slower pace in his going about, but the same going about, the same climbing of stairs that he shouldnt be doing, the same willfullness just a notch below the standard stubborness.
as if nothing happened at all. as if he was just getting over the flu.
no longer welcomed
books, there can never be enough books
i wished she would say that. i wish she would believe that. and i swore, i swore one time she did believe that. but now, now walking between stacks of books, she told me no, she told me in front of the children, no. she told me in front of the children that there were too many books to be had. we had enough books. we had to stop it already with the books. and although i smiled, although i chided her, kissed her, pleaded with her, i felt odd, i felt distant, an immigrant who, having spent a long duration from home not only no longer recognized it, but was now no longer even welcomed.
quadratic bliss
it all began with lines and boxes, straight lines and sharp right degree angles. i loved algebra as a child because of the demand for precision, for exacting angles and stalwart lines. Quadratic equations were the best: both sides had to be made whole and equal, the beauty of symmetry. i would map them out across an imaginary grid, as if all of space and time could be simplified to quarter inch squares stretching across a finite boundary of paper and lead. as if i too could be made clean and perfect and graceful through extraction and exactness. as if i too could fall from grace like a meteor but rebound before crashing into the zero point, into the hard nothing, and triumphantly ascend, rocketing off the page into the infinite, into a pure state of bliss.
a/musing
ever closer to forty, the fury of forty, the resignation, the sputtering out, the desire to revisit, revamp, re-do, undo. impossible, all of it.
and this, voice, this disembodied embodiment of disappointment, of judgement: once youthful and wise, now smoke laden, tired and sore. done with itself even while speaking. out of the dark, something returns to nothing.
and yet, yet: doomsday scenarios that would tear the heart asunder; daydream vistas of compassion and love and the beauty of immortal children; fearful transgression into the very depth of a death only a smattering of decades away.
how do you do it?
Greek Independence Day Parade NYC
did you dream this
did you dream this? i slept through waking nightmares and sleep through precious moments where i rest and they rest and we laugh but i am gone, absent, ethereal, unreal.
i cringe at the thought. i cringe at all thoughts. i cringe at my thoughts. i cringe at the sight of me: imperfect, oblong, irregular, irrational, unattractive, ugly, obtuse, meat sack sagging through the kitchen, the living room, the stair the bedroom: avoid all mirrors at all costs.
only for the close ups, the face, the bags under the eyes, the eyebrows dense, the slight grey at the temples. just barely looking at, if at all.
only to them
there had been a time, a something for the day, every day: visceral and gaunt, toothy and wrapped in sinew. and now, now, silence within a semblance of peace. but it’s all there, under the floor boards, like poe’s beating heart ranting and screaming and bursting at the seams and i dance over it instead, steps stomped out in routine and mediocrity, with dressing the children and washing their hands and holding them tightly as we venture in to the world, day in, day out. bang all you want, tortured demon of mine, but this isn’t your time: i belong only to them.
best. christmas. ever
