19.01.2023

At three-and-a-half, a surgeon's knife 

Carved my future from my belly 

That was the first I learned that even 

My body is not mine. 

At eight, alone, I staked my claim 

When I opened my wrists like early birthday presents.

Triptych #3 : 18.01.2023

I

To hell with your false bravado

Your obligatory resilience, it bores me to death

Show me instead, your

Injuries,  your

Soft open hand

Show me the stubbornness of your trust

And I will open to you like a tasty wound.

 

II

A broken bone, improperly healed

Must be broken again to reset correctly

I break myself open

One hundred times a day

I'll never heal correctly—

I make certain of it.

This is my demonstration

Against your bootstrap imperative

I hoisted my sign the first time at thirteen, lying half conscious beneath the

Head cheerleader's mother's wheel

They said I might lose the foot,  but

Instead, I gained a gentle new thing

Softness, it turns out, can be stubborn too.

 

III

Each time I think of your last days in that horrible bed

I'm haunted by your

Swollen blue hands

Toward the end, they'd tied them down so that you couldn't extubate yourself.

The finality came, your stone hand in mine,  I watched your chest heave

Artificially

Long after the screen told me that your heart had stopped.

17.01.2023

17.01.2023

We who subsist, one foot in the ground are 

Powerful growers; our 

Branches might even blot out your sun, 

Steal its harsh light to feed our own 

Leaves. Forgive me, please, for this brief narcissism

Will you now hate me for my admission?

15.01.2023

Suicide is a drug, and I 

Am addicted

Each dose fixed slightly less carefully than the last

I watch my own ritual, over

And over

One day I'll drift off into the sweet sleep of overdose

I imagine the elements of my life as detritus—

the granny cart that was Carrie's "from the Queens days", with one wheel now held on by a corrupted bobbypin

My brass flask

(Will it be discovered empty, containing only the vague scent of brandy?)

Will the unopened bottle of Chanel N°5 in the back of the fridge 

Find a new neck to perfume? 

Will the thousands of books that crowd my apartment find their own lonely tomb, or

Will they live again? 

I miss smoking. 

Well, why shouldn't I? What's the use in abstinence now? This crass charade that

If we behave virtuously, we can live forever? No thank you. 

I imagine myself as a memory

Or a cautionary tale—

"Poets almost never end up happily, become a plumber, instead!"

Suicide is a drug, and I am addicted

This taste of sweet freedom the tongue can never forget.

14.01.2023 II Love Note

What better thing could there be than to be

That soft spot where you might land

When all the worlds— 

both inside and out 

have assailed you with calloused hands?  

14.01.2023

It's day again.

Awakeness again.

This brash returning to me

I'm never ready.

My angry, growling neighbour is shouting and slamming doors again

The wall between our apartments shakes

A raucous chorus of sostenuto horns break through my thin windows again—

Other exasperated people I'd never ordinarily have to know are stuck in traffic on some impassable block

And now I know them

I know them too well

It's intimate

My tired body has been penetrated by someone else's impatience again

But now, the buzzer sounds–

FedEx is here again

My phone rings,  

It's Citibank again

There's no time for a gentle awakening

No time to meet the day slowly, on softened feet

The things that others

Seem to accept as a precondition of the world

Assail me

Day is an impatient dog with unkempt claws

Scratching up my tender legs.

13.01.2023

Apparently, I missed my morning pills (which include my prozac) 

Everyday this week until today. 

Last night, I was feeling so close to giving in, that 

When I came home from my doctor's appointment, I downed half a bottle of brandy the moment I'd dropped my purse on the sideboard

Harm reduction

My doctor is doubling my dose 

I suppose it would help more if I remember to take it

Yesterday was also my final session with a grief counselor

I was allotted eight

Eight forty-five minute sessions 

Spread out over nine weeks 

For the loss of my love 

Of eighteen years

Yesterday was hard 

I almost went looking for my cache

Today, so far is slightly easier; I don't trust it.  

Sometimes the killer is inside the house

When mine gets bored, he stands over me with ultimatums: 

Poetry or pills?

Be wary, I guess, if ever I go silent.

12.01.2023

 Never have I swum in gentle creeks

Only torrents wild, arroyos, shallow and quick to anger have bathed me

I drowned a hundred times before I was three

That was the summer of my surgery

Recovering, my mother placed a donut for me on her dresser—

Pink frosting with sprinkles on a blue and white plate

If I wanted it, I'd have to get up from their expansive green bed and walk 

Seven feet 

Cross the ochre, shag carpet

Heavy guts tumbling out from fresh, red and yellow sutures.

10.01.2023

Some mornings

Like this morning

As slowly I rise, a phoenix from sleep

I forget that I'm alone in my bed, I dream

A partner who's impatiently awaiting her coffee

A dog who needs me to let him out to pee

A mother I have to call

Even a mythical kitten enthralled

Hunting invisible bugs on the wall

When finally, I catch up to reality

It's a shock; I go through 

All my recent losses

And the grief begins anew.

11.01.2023 I

11.01.2023 I

Suspiciously, slightly less suicidal this morning

Though I've learned to mistrust this absence of drive

That old and comforting, familiar friend; I've known her since I was eight: the first time 

I opened my wrists on that rust pitted blade broken 

Off from a red, plastic pencil sharpener. 

She's kept me company through my darkest epochs, some lasting days or weeks, or years. Even decades. 

She's only ever an aching palm away 

Close as my own fingerprints.

Maybe she's just gone out for groceries. 

Maybe she's off on holiday.  She rarely says when she's leaving or 

For how long she'll be away

However, kind friend that she is, she knows just how to anticipate my need for her; something

Happens and Bang! she's right beside me once again.

09.01.2023 II

How often I want to ask you

Could you love me

Could you do

What I need you to do? 

Could you stand beside me while I dance this daily danse macabre

Could you abide me even as I rob 

From you your afternoon light? 

The hydrangea with which I've bedecked my mantle

Arrived already dead

Not wilted but crisp and warm brown in their winter sleep

A bit like me

This "elegant skeleton" who

Stands here before you, still

Possessed of beauty in my place between the worlds, asking

Could you love me? Could you

Love me loving you? Could you

Tend to my grave after I've passed through? 

Could you adore this thing that insists to cling

To sides of cliffs

Stubborn goat

Who- all too aware the narrow ground is 

Even now crumbling beneath her cloven hooves?

Who refuses her place in the Ridiculous parade for 

Those vainglorious warriors who maintain 

Some futile hope against entropy—

Could you love me? 

Could you accept me loving you? 

Could you even 

Dance with me, or simply bang the 

Timpani while I do what I do?

09.01.2023 I

 Diminished by your loss,

Only slightly there

I hang on by a gold locket of your silver hair

Or a whiff of mysteriously perfumed air– 

Egyptian musk, that 

Haunts the small hall 

Outside our room—

Is that you? Are you there? 

Why won't you come in, wrap around me again? 

I don't understand,  

Are you there? Are you aware? Or 

Are you no spectre at all? Only air? 

If I go on to find you will I too dissapear:

A collection of recollections

A cautionary tale? An occasional whiff of Chanel N°5 

Which no one but you would attach meaning to? 

"Old Lady Perfume" you called it

And you were right

I am older than the dirt that covers your white 

Coffin, on whose lid I left my 

Red lip mark

One last joke whose punchline will hang over you forever. 

You hated to kiss me when I was wearing lipstick

I loved to torture you 

That same way. 

"Blech! Blech!" You'd swipe at your lips by back of hand.

This image, more than any other I fold into a small square

And tuck it neatly inside my brassiere. 

07.01.2023 II

The hydrangea corpses hang on in my winter garden

Still beautiful in death

Elegant skeletons

We have something in common I suppose

I still receive compliments although I too am dead. 

Still, 

Nobody picks my brown blooms for their mantle. 

07.01.2023 I

My life stretches out behind me 

Like a rat's tail; I cannot shake it. 

Before me, an interminably high and broad 

Wall: solid and grey as slate. 

No way over or around it, 

Only thing is to join with it:

Become carbon again!

Compost compressed 

Time immemorial

What a wonderful word: 

Im. Em. Orial. 

Time will not remember me, 

Will not recall my soft thoughts or deeds— they'll dissolve

Along with my flesh; my

Cheeks and breasts, 

Belly and thighs, a 

Delicious repast for the

Microbes and mites

Calcium will be the final discernable element— the only fossil or record of me. 

How wonderful to become 

That wall before me. 

Twenty-Six Green, Thirty-Eight White

 The vile of green sticks, and the 

Bottle of flat, white 

Pills scare me.  Too easily swallowed with a glass of brandy

Impossible to forget, and far too handy.

They wait me out, just out of sight

I count them out on Friday nights

Twenty-six green, and

thirty-eight white.

06.01.2023 I

 I've always been a little in 

Love with death;

She's gently teased from my first glimpse of light

"Come hither to safety you tired, wary babe,

Come rest your head upon my breast."

She is mother, father, and lover as well–

Even as she claims each for her own.  

Oh death, how your great, broad 

Curling arms call me 

To lay myself down by the roots of trees;

How your promise of safe, and dreamless sleep warms me

Even as I in your cutting wake freeze. 

 

05.01.2023 IV

 My eyes are so much worse than they were even nine months ago;

the last time I had a vision exam. 

I've had surgery since then, for a detaching retina.  

It's made little difference. I

Still see the strange, bright white flashes of light

I still can't read the cable guide

In fact, 

I'm having so much trouble reading much of anything. 

I went today into Cohen Optical to

Ask about a new vision exam

A new pair of glasses, explain how the old ones are 

Worse than nothing at all. 

"You'll have to wait until April" she tells me, either that or

Pay out of pocket.  

Five hundred dollars, minimum it turns out. 

I'll wait. 

Just three more months. 

After all, I barely drive anymore

And who needs to read, anyway?

05.01.2023 III

 Maurice has a hernia.

He lifts te many layers of his sweatshirts to show me. 

"That looks painful" I grimace

"It don't hurt. If it don't go away in Febyooary, they gonna take care of it in March."

We talk about the dangers of surgical mesh ; I decide not to tell him how it slowly murdered my mother over 24 years. 

He asks me if I'm married. I decide not to tell him I'm a widow. 

As I'm getting up from the bus bench to leave, he asks me for a hug. There are giant, gloppy tears falling from his right eye. 

I hug him twice per his request. 

He asks if he can squeeze my ass.

He asks me if I'll be his friend.  

But he wants more from me than I have to give

Even to myself.

05.01.2023 II

 The world can't sustain its interest in tragedies.  

Past the point of titillation, beyond the opportunity for heroism, where chosen responsability and hopelessness collide 

Lies irrevocable fatigue.

I must be very tiring. 

(I exhaust myself.)

I feel myself becoming a forgone conclusion. 

It's a comfort 

Of sorts.      The circle grows smaller. 

I'll spill my guts until they 

All slip away on the offal mess. 

It's a leak that no

Matter how I try, 

I cannot seem to plug. 

05.01.2023 I

The candle upon my yellow table

Why won't its flame stay still, and calm? 

There's no swift current of air passing over it

Instead, too aware of its vanishing dawn

It gambols,    it bounds, 

Awild 

Unrestrained

A polyphony!   Its internal law. 

04.01.2023 III

 

What can we learn from poor 

Unica Zürn

Anne Sexton 

And Sylvia Plath?

That being a poetess is bad for one's health!

04.01.2023 II

 Homecoming is a predatory, corpulent child

Not patient to wait 'til I've undressed and eaten

But pounces upon my tired, sore back

Shouting "giddyap, giddyap, giddyap!"

04.01.2023 I

 When Emily Dickinson wrote of

"Hope", 

 As "a thing with feathers that perches in the soul", 

She neglected to mention its terrible beak

And talons for tearing into the weak

Hope is no gentle, cooing dove,  

But a hungry and treacherous beast from above. 

03.01.2023 IV

This pain behind my collarbone that

Snatches away my breath

Comes sharp, un-preannounced

A rather indelicate guest 

Who I'll invite to stay nevertheless

Such pain is only comfort

As from a workman's calloused hands

I will not make him leave

Regardless of the requests

Of all my other snooty guests.

03.01.2023

 When I– relieved

Go on to join 

The tree roots, and weeds, I 

Do not go clean or white as a bleached bone

But silted and sooted and properly burned

For losing my world has left its scorch inside me.

02.01.2023 III

 Nothing is ever wasted;

there's nary a thing as waste:

Whether a meal for entropy, growth, or mirth, or the 

Hungry worms that till the earth.

02.01.2023 II

Somewhere across the concrete yard that gives 

Pause 'tween the teeth of my Yorkville block

Someone is beating a nail into wood

Tap, tap, bang

Hammer nail two by four

Monotone marimba

Unfortunate concerto

And I– I linger in bed

'gainst open window cold

Covers yanked up 

Around my bare breasts

Whilst an impatient January morning 

Circles like a wolf

Eager for a fallen scrap of meat.

02.01.2023 I

 This dreadful thing,  this

Opening to consciousness,  to

Light and

Consequence

And hope

The latter of course, the most treacherous of them all. 

Yes, this grief is sweet

But is no recomcompense  for your absence. 

It has taught me many things, this grief, like

How to manage bills, and

How to get through milestones such as

Birthdays, and

New Years Eve

(Light candles, drink too much wine, eat pizza and pretend it's just another day) 

And yes, as Rumi implied,

Missing you is sweet, 

But how saccharine, I think, 

I'd so much rather have you next to me 

Watching the Twilight Zone in bed, 

Eating "cruds" and crackers and brie 

Assuring one another of how

Unimportant this day really is

Because we have each other

And what could matter more? 

Except that now,  of course, 

We don't.

We walk hand in hand round the grey reservoir, 

Or on rain-soaked cobblestone, slippery sidewalks, 

'Neath soggy, cold and golden trees

Note the patterns in the trodden on leaves

Dodging loud tourists who block our way

Staring lost at their phones, looking for the Met

This is our time, our city, 

Our space

My melancholy 

And me.

 I am, I suspect, in danger of falling in love with my grief, so predisposed have I always been to melancholia.  

It's the most suitable substitute for my lost Love I've yet to find: always present, safe, and warm, a generous partner to hold against me in a cold, expansive bed. 

Were I to buy into the paradigm that we somehow choose our fates, I might even believe that I went into this relationship fully, so that I might fully experience losing Carrie, and the subsequent violent dissolution of my entire universe. But I'm not a fatalist. I did not choose this.

And yet, I've little choice but to embrace it with my whole being, which includes of course, finding the immeasurable beauty within it.  

This vocation is my love letter to Carrie: even if it's a letter she'll never read.

Into a winter's afternoon sleep

Eyes shut tight against the light  

Images of fallen, yellow gingko leaves 

Coating the wet sidewalks and streets

Their curled edges: sparkling shards 

Of facetted amber in the 

Slanted golden light.

 I realised something last night whilst on a particularly lovely date; we were talking about what it was we were each looking for, and at first, I'd said something along the lines that I was hoping to find a friend with whom I could share physical intimacy,  but then, as I thought about it more, I realised, I'm not as interested in hookups as I'd previously thought.  I really do want some kind of actual intimacy that's expressed through many ways, including (but not only)  sex, rather than simply sex itself, for its own sake.  This may not sound revolutionary, but for me, it was revelatory.

I don't miss coming, nor even making someone else come; I  miss the excitement that comes from the slow peeling away of the layers of artifice we all cultivate in order to survive this world, both from myself and from somebody else, allowing our true selves to meet, and the warmth, the friction and melding that occurs as a natural result, when sex is simply the closest tool at our disposal for bringing our bodies along where our souls have already gone.

I've been desperately hurrying through the grief of losing my partner,  because part of me is convinced I will never again find the easy kind of intimacy the two of us shared, and it's true, I may not; this is a terrifying thought. I've been subsuming my grief in the process of trying to slake my physical hungers, but with this realisation came the understanding that those hungers aren't only,  nor even mainly physical.  I cannot run from this pain, and, I no longer wish to.  Instead, I want to grow toward something. 

This process has been, and will continue to be painful, but it has also been, and I hope, will continue to be beautiful.  This is metamorphosis: the dissolution of a previous self in order to emerge anew, and I'm here for it. I'm here for all of it.

Oh, to feel, 

Indeed, to BE unhurried again

To have the time 

To take time,  to

Shrug off this weighty mantle of desperation;

This, alas, is the privilege of the young, where 

We who've seen 

Fifty (plus) years

Who've lost that which we were

Once so able to take for granted, must

Pressed by time and the march of Entropy,

fev'rishly rush to secure our nests, to

Bolster our stores

All the while, too aware of the approaching winter.

 Theoretical me I to theoretical me II : 

"Honestly, I don't know whether I'm coming or going these days. "

Theoretical me II to theoretical me I :

"That must put quite the damper on your dating life."

Even the winter buds hide their eyes in anaesthetic sleep on days like this, 

But I,

Foolhardy bear, hungry for beauty, 

(or distraction,)

Venture out from my warm and well appointed cave

Not nearly layered sufficiently, 

My bones split and splinter in the cold. 

It's 3:08 AM, and the cold emptiness that woke me is creeping up my inner walls, filling me full with Nothing.

 Today, when I broke down, quietly sobbing in Max Brenner, the reason I was so upset that the tourists at the next table were staring at, and whispering about me, is because it was a direct contravention of New York protocol.  

Ours is a crowded city.  I can't count the number of times I've been in a Duane Reade or Gristede's and some young woman in Uggs (always in Uggs,) was on her phone crying, or fighting with someone, and nobody nearby so much as batted an eye.  Why? Because in this crowded city, we understand the need for space, invisibility.  We respect one another by not making one another self conscious, by not bothering one another.  This isn't because we don't care; on the contrary,  it's because we understand.  It's because we share so much: space, culture, fate, needs... 

When tourists come into our communal spaces and contravene our cultural standards it's intrusive.  They are the proverbial "ugly Americans", regardless of where they're from.  

So I beg you non New Yorkers, come enjoy our beautiful city,  but learn something about our customs and culture, and please don't treat us locals as spectacles.  We're just living our lives, and sometimes,  that means we are publicly messy.  

Just ignore us.  (Except when we're trying to pass you on the sidewalk; then, for God's sake, please, get the hell out of our way. )

This wound that you left in my life

will never heal;

It's edges, 

Crusted, dried and inflamed still itch

And burn

And ooze all over everything:

Our bed, 

The yellow chair

Even my favourite wrap dress is ruined

I will never 

Wear it  

Again.

Note: the following is not a suicide note.  It's simply a reflection of my daily struggle, of the omnipresence of ideation I've lived with since I was 8, and particularly since my love passed away.  

I'm a poet; I often write for the purpose of catharsis, as a way to exorcise certain tendencies.

I'm not a danger to myself, and in fact, I'm committed to doing everything in my power to stay in this beautiful and terrible world.  

...

Today marks one month without my Carrie by my side, 

And as I sit here in my deep, soft velvet reading chair, 

My breakfast of a 

Quartered apple 

And a bowl of coffee on the Little Yellow Table before me, 

Showered, and perfumed, 

Dressed, and shod,

I can't help thinking that today, 

This moment

This spot 

Might be the perfect

Day

Moment, and 

Spot 

To crack open my father's bottle of Oxy,

And down them with my morning coffee. 

There are two stones on the living room window sill,

I don't remember how they got there;

I suppose I found them somewhere, and their smooth roundness was pleasing to my senses. 

I have always collected things. They hang around, long after their provenance is forgotten: it's a sort of death of its own I suppose: these objects bereft of their meanings become like carcases. 

There are two stones on the living room window sill; I no longer remember from whence they came, nor why I held onto them, but now, I'll keep them nonetheless.  

After all, on their surface may still linger some stray molecules of your living breath.

There were so many plans:

We were going to buy a new bed, one that didn't slope on my side

A wardrobe, and dresser (I have "way too many clothes") 

One day, we'd go on a cruise; I've never been on one before, and you told me how black and impenetrable the night was out at sea

I wanted so badly to one day show you MY Israel, the way you've shown me YOUR New York. 

There was a future, already written

whose pages have now been torn from their spine. 

 You'd even offered to try

Sleeping without tv

In the silent darkness that always scared you

It reminded you of death you'd always told me 

And your frenzied mind wouldn't stop, so you could sleep

But you were willing to try

If only I'd come home

To sleep beside you

Get you your water before bed. 

Lemons

The lemons I'd placed in this bowl have dried out

No longer yellow and soft

The spider plants have all died,  their

Dessicated leaves folded in surrender 

The blue rug lies,

Just where I left it

But the northeast corner, no longer held in place by your exercise chair 

Has flipped over, leaving a 

Right angled ghost

In the dust on the floor. 

This house is a mess

There is chaos everywhere

Fruitflies drown in my bedside water at night

It's cold, 

And the heavy comforter is slowly collecting into a pile on the floor by my side of the bed

No warm body next to me 

To halt this entropy.

I will sit alone on my cold terrasse at my little yellow table and drink my wine 

I will look for patterns on our sidewalk in the fallen yellow gingko leaves

I will walk to the churchyard and talk to the small flowers that bloom only in the winter

And I will continue to ache for you

I will sip my chocolate slowly, holding the warm cup in both my cold hands

I will dive headfirst into De Beauvoir and Bataille

I will enjoy the sting of the cold Fall air in the back of my throat

And I will continue to ache for you

I will get up each morning and weigh myself, marking each increment toward my shifting goal

I will walk our neighbourhood, discovering new things to tell you about

I will date, and I will kiss and I will fuck and I will love, 

And I will continue to ache for you. 

I will seek joy

I will find beauty

I will embrace the malaise that permeates my nights

I will continue to converse with you if only in my own head

And I will forever continue to ache for you.

 I still remember how the skin of your upper arm felt under my tracing fingertips, the way it felt to pass my hand under the sleeve of your t-shirt to touch your cool back.  I remember your scent and the gravity of your body beside me in bed. How, back to back, we'd press the soles of our feet together, sometimes even interlacing toes. 

How this new aloneness is real is beyond my comprehension; I reject it and search for your ghost.

The waking world holds no light for we the grieving 

And so we sleep

And sleep

And sleep 

by whatever means available

And try to dream our missing selves into Lightedness. 

 "Widow":

the word fits like a too tight, comically ridiculous black velvet hat, but it also feels right.  I want the world to know my world has been cracked in half and left bleeding.

I want strangers to be soft with me, waiters and clerks and cashiers to understand and speak gently, make no demands

Because right now, the glue that held me together is gone, and the tiniest bump will shatter me into a million shards.

27.10.2022

 We New Yorkers are experts at staving off loneliness, so long as there's a 24 hour diner nearby our apartment, so long as we can afford to avail ourselves, (at least for the moment).

The girl in the booth across the aisle from me is talking to her male friend:

"I'm really hungry! I think I'll get the panini ala vodka. Ooh, with chicken! But they have broccoli too. I like broccoli."

Her friend doesn't correct her and the waiter suddenly shows up at their table. 

"I want the panini ala vodka" she says. 

I lean over: "I think you really want the penne ala vodka" I say, smiling.  She laughs: 

"Oh right! I'm really drunk" she says.

"Good for you!" I say,  "I just didn't want him to bring you a pressed sandwich soaked in vodka."

Until

 The panic attack rose while I was in Whole Foods like a wave of nausea I had to keep down or I'd collapse into a screaming, sobbing ball, punching the sides of my own head in the spaghetti sauce aisle. 

"Have the two of you discussed what measures would you like us to take in case your heart stops?" 

It was a routine question, but the way in which it was asked...

The young doctor was almost apologetic, nervous.  She'd spoken as if the question wasn't really "if", but "when". 

Carrie, of course, wanted all possible measures taken.  The young doctor tried to dissuade her: "You know what that means?  That there will be a breathing tube as well as compressions,  and that you'll likely need to remain on the ventilator until..."

The unspoken end of her sentence was the loudest sound I'd ever heard.

Inertia

Nothing so crass as pills or opened veins,

Neither rope, nor belt tied o'er the back of the bedroom door

No

If I lose you, 

I will sit here, 

Neither eat nor drink

Fallen prey to inertia

While the world decays around me

Buries me in its weighty detritus

'til my roots rejoin the earth

My constituent parts 

return to the soil

(My "self" will be already gone)

For who am I, to 

stand in the way of

Entropy?

After all,

It's not personal; 

(Nothing enormous ever is, is it?)

It's just the natural order of things.

This is a strange and different country, this grief, over the things that are 

Promised to leave me.

Although I've been here before, I know only very few words in the local tongue, and 

Barely any of the customs.

The cuisine too is strange 

(and potentially poisonous)

But nonetheless, for now, here I sit:

A polite guest at my host's table 

Fork and knife and spoon in hand.

Homecoming, 30 April 2022

In my childhood's room where you and I once shared a narrow mattress perched precariously on broken box spring;

(Did we fuck on that mattress? I can't remember anymore.) 

Well, that bed, the one I grew up in, is long gone now;

Likewise, the back breaking, broken box spring.

Instead,

What was once my room in this house now holds:

A few unimportant books, 

My mom's clothes, 

and the too soft, plastic covered mattress she slept on in her rented hospital bed 

in the middle of the living room when she became 

too weak to make it upstairs anymore.

Now it lies on the floor, 

And I, on it

Neath leopard print cotton sheet I once stabbed and slashed in a fit of my own young rage 

(Was I 17? It's such a 17-year- old-me kind of thing to do.)

And instead of you this time, only the cold ghosts of my own past lie pressed beside me,

Skin on skin,

against my 

naked back.

 השורשים שלי נשארים תמיד 

 גם כשרגליי אינן שם

 הראש שלי, הלב שלי עדיין

 .והארץ שלי היא נשארת בי

Tzror HaChayim

 A poem I wrote many years ago: 

(This poem now has a title, after nearly 20 years, thanks to Philip Ohriner .)

Some people live in a perpetual state of exile

But exile is not always

imposed by place

There are those who are left there by the

passage of time

and those who were simply born mis-

fits into this world

All who are in exile however

have something in common: 

we carry small pieces of our

native worlds with us

like pebbles

(some are worn smooth,

some remain tenaciously jagged and sharp) 

We carry them in our pockets

or sometimes in our shoes.

 I had a dream where I remembered suddenly that I'd been using the space between my toes as book storage,  so that I'd always have certain books with me,  but then,  I realized that I shower everyday,  and started worrying that maybe the books weren't in the best condition anymore,  so,  I took them all out from between my toes,  (marveling at how long my big toes were.. they were like 8 inches long! Afterall,  these were full size books, ) and looking through them,  and saw that they were absolutely fine! In fact,  one of them,  (it was an old, green,  "everyman's library" type hardcover book) when I opened it,  the old black and white pictures in it of a polar bear and very fluffy white dog,  were still moving.  

But what does it all mean?

Radio off, we drive in silence 

She beside me, we listen to cricket gossip 

I, driving, write this poem: 

The Kerhonkson roads have a smell in late summer 

At 62 Farenheit, and 70% humidity, 

They smell of old wood houses and 

wet green roadsides 

ancient trees with porous bark 

Occasionally, skunk (a smell I like.) 

My t-shirt sleeve grows wet by the open window, and 

slow motion moths change direction before the windshield 

white wings blue in dashboard light

We round a bend where 3 local boys died 

truck split in half on a telephone pole

(the newest ghosts of Samsonville Road) 

I hold the wheel a little tighter, we're almost home

"There's a pickup behind us, better signal early, so he doesn't rear end us" -my practical wife pulls me out of my own head 

Inside now,  "remember to put the ice cream away before you sit down to write" she says as she disappears down the hall.

So we're headed into another heatwave it would seem, which is obviously the perfect time to FINALLY receive the heavy leather motorcycle jacket I ordered off Amazon. I chose it after exhaustive research, vacillating between the one with side laces and the one without, calling the manufacturer to ask the weight of the jacket, having immediate buyers remorse after checking out because maybe I should have chosen the one with the laces afterall, oh well, or maybe I should have gone with that one that had the braided detail oh god what did I just spend a hundred something dollars on what was I thinking??? When I was a 13 year old suburban punk kid living in North Miami Beach, Fl, I washed so many cars at 5.00 a piece, going door to door after school everyday until it was dark out and I could no longer even see whether the cars were clean so I could buy my first leather motorcycle jacket out of the Sears catalogue. It was a hundred dollars back then, (which was a lot more than a hundred dollars is now,) and even though the South Florida heat was oppressive, along with my combat boots, I would wear my heavy, leather jacket which I'd made even heavier with all the band pins on its lapels every single day, (because I was THAT punk) eventually ripping out its lining in a misinformed attempt to make it slightly less hot. It eventually fell apart, because apparently the lining is more integral than I knew, and I wouldn't get my next leather biker jacket until many years later when I was living in New York. I've since had several; some of them painted and studded, some left plain, but here's the thing, they were all men's jackets. They all fit my body, or more accurately, failed to fit my body in very boxy, awkward ways. I've never had a women's black leather biker jacket until today. When it arrived this morning, I unwrapped it from its grey, plastic bag and unfolded it, laying it out on the bed. Unbuckling its belt, I unzipped it, and immediately unzipped the winter weight full sleeve liner and removed it. It's SO much lighter than all my other jackets, some of which, I kid you not weigh 20 lbs. I put it on, and stood in front of the full length mirror we have in the bedroom. It stopped where my hips began. I zipped it up. It closed over my chest like it was made to. I lifted my arms. The sleeves didn't cover my finger tips, but stopped at my wrists, where, sleeves are supposed to stop. "Please don't paint this one" Carrie said, and I laughed, as I turned this way and the other looking at myself. When I'd bought all my other jackets, I was trying so hard to be something I wasn't, something I could never really be, and they fit my body in ways that constantly reminded me of that fact, which is to say, they didn't fit me at all. I'm so glad I'm able to stop pretending. This fits me so much better.

To be a Jew who is, generally speaking,
a leftist,
or more specifically speaking, compassionate, empathetic,
soft hearted, etc,
is to have a heart that is
layered in scars,
broken, superglued and stapled back together
so many times you can't even count anymore.

To be a Jew who cares about her fellow humans
is to be reminded again
and again
and again of how disposable you are,
why your struggles
"just don't matter that much right now"
"are distracting" or "derailing"
"you're taking away from the real struggles people are facing!"

To be a Jew, generally speaking,
is to keep fighting anyways
even if nobody fights for you
holding on to hope
that if push comes to shove
"They'll come through in the end"
(whether you think they really will or not.)

What if I told you that those fire kites and balloons from Gaza are just readying the land for a new crop of beautiful wildflowers and that the rockets that fall on us are really full of seeds that will one day sprout all kinds of vegetables and fruit- tomatoes so delicious you'd think God had tended them with her own hands, the sweetest, reddest watermelon you've ever tasted, peppermint and garlic and even peaches and plums and figs will grow from the dewy, fresh field that's been prepared by the loving kindness of our cousins who've worked so hard and sacrificed so much to send us those beautiful kite and balloon lanterns, like stars or promises floating in the summer sky.

There's a mustard yellow, velvet chair that's deep enough for me to put my feet underneath myself when I sit in it. It's next to our living room window, and it gets alot of light on sunny days. It's where I often sit when I have phone sessions with my therapist, it's where I used to sit to meditate, and it's where I like to go when I need some time to myself, to read, to write, away from the TV that's always on in our bedroom since its on/off switch broke off. (It's old. )
This past Saturday was a freakish 77°F, and mostly sunny. I'd known about the forecast since Monday? Tuesday? and I'd been looking forward to possibly getting out somewhere in my powerchair to enjoy it before the return of our regularly scheduled 40°s and 50°s rainy days. Unfortunately, the night before, my heart rate had stayed hovering somewhere between 102 and 118 bpm for hours, leaving me dizzy and with the worst migraine I'd had in weeks. On Saturday, I was still wiped out and didn't get to go out to enjoy the weather. Instead, in the late afternoon while our south facing window still filled with Springtime light, I sat in the gold chair, my legs folded beneath me, my lap covered in a burgandy throw my mom sent us years ago.
Chronic illness has a way of reconfiguring our desires. Three years ago, maybe two? full of the urgency of a first hot Spring day, I would have been on my way to Riis beach with my bestie, a backpack of snacks and my usual Riis look of a short skirt, a bra and my punk vest. These days were the days I lived for, the chance to see and be seen by the Riis Queer-noscenti, and to feel the warmth of the sun and of the community.
I still miss this world so much, but it's become so much harder to access. I rarely have the spoons to be social anymore, even though I miss my friends. Even more, I miss myself. I know that sounds corny, but I miss being the Sarit who goes to shows, who goes to Fat Femme Clothing Swaps, who works (I don't miss sex work itself, but I miss so many things that it gave me, ) and who goes to Riis.
My world has become small. Being able to shower, get dressed and take my powerchair to the supermarket up the street feels like a huge outing, and tires me out like a huge outing.
I've had short periods since I got sick where I felt honest to goddess close to normal, and I've learned to never take them for granted. When they come now, whether they're a day, a week or a few hours, I treasure them and do everything in my power to make the best of them. But they're rare.
For now though, I look forward to warmer, sunnier days, and I'm grateful for my velvet chair by the living room window.

"May the bridges I burn light the way"
-Dylan McKay, Beverly Hills 90210
...
May the bridges I burn be well selected for burning.
May I have done due diligence, checking that they might not have- with some care and repair, continued to serve as good connections.
If the above is satisfied, and only if,
May their embers float harmlessly into the sky
never to burn me or trouble me again.

Today is yom hashoah, Holocaust remembrance day.
I was born in 1968, 23 short years after the end of the Holocaust. (For comparison, 9/11 was 17 years ago. Think about how close that feels.)
I grew up surrounded- and I do mean surrounded, by living survivors, some of whom were younger than I am now, hearing their first hand stories of life and death in the ghettos and camps. None of the movies I've seen, and I've seen pretty much all of them, even came close to touching on the horror of these accounts: the violence and egregious sadism enacted upon women, children, men and families is somehow uncaptureable on film.
I've heard first hand tellings of infants ripped from their mothers' arms, and literally, physically ripped apart by laughing SS guards before their suddenly silenced bodies were tossed onto a pile; I've heard first hand accounts of witnesses who watched as a young SS sat casually on the edge of an open pit, a cigarette dangling from his lips as he fired a tripod mounted machine gun into line after line of the naked bodies of Jewish fathers, mothers and children who held hands for the last time.
I carry these and other painfully lucid memories, many of them as if they were my own. I am a child of these stories. For those of us who are aware, we're watching what looks alot like a repeat of what led to the first Shoah.
This is why we say #NeverForget. #NeverAgain.

I've made and worn punk vests since I was 15.
My first, a bluejean jacket I'd cut the sleeves off of, thick layers of acrylic paint stiffened the back until caked with South Florida sweat, it would stand on its own, leaning lazily in the corner of my North Miami Beach bedroom.

Recent vests have been yellow floral, blue pokadot, blue or black denim, trimmed in lace at the collar and pockets and/or pierced with pyramid or arrow point studs, and held together with silkscreened canvas patches stitched on in dental floss. My most recent was half of a 50.00 gift card, bought at the Fulton Street Macy's in Downtown Brooklyn. It's black, has been kept relatively unadorned except for a back patch that says "Believe Survivors", one pin that says "Black Lives Matter", another that says "I can see right through your bullshit" and a third that simply says "End Violence Against Sex Workers".
It has pockets, allowing me easy access to my phone, my wallet and a knife without having to go into the backpack on the back of my wheelchair. This vest is largely utilitarian, and I almost always wear it because of that, even if it doesn't quite go with whatever else I'm wearing.

Today my therapist and I were talking about survival. I was talking about how ill at home I feel in my sick body so much of the time. About how I spend so much of my time dissociated from my body, especially when I start to bleed heavily from places I shouldn't be bleeding from, or when my illness becomes apparent on my skin in visible rashes like the Bartonella rash I have right now on my left tit.
I recognize my own internalized ableism in this struggle, as well as the privelege and costs of living with largely invisible illnesses.
We talked about the time two or three years ago when assaulted on 6th Ave, I spun around and for the first time in my life, smashed the nose of the man who'd violated me, and we talked about the very different kind of vulnerability of being in a wheelchair, strapped to the floor of a bus when a man with beer sweat and visible and triggering masculine anger demands my attention. We talked about the particular kind of vulnerability that existing as a Femme in a wheelchair in the world entails.
We talked about the way that for most of my life when my agency had been violated, I'd disappeared into suicidal ideation or attempts, and how- now that I've decided to survive, to make it to at LEAST 50, that's no longer an option or a comfort. We talked about how scary that is.
Today, she told me I was one of the most resilient people she'd ever encountered in her practice.
While my imposter syndrome did acrobatics to argue and disprove her assertion, part of me felt seen and validated. I realized that I am resilient.

At 15, my punk vest was my armor. Its stiffness and weight were reassuring to my queer, autistic, depressed, trans, extremely sensitive, scared, scarred and embattled body.

Tonight, I wrapped myself in my therapist's validation. This feels like the most fitting punk vest I've ever worn.

Mouse

Turns out, you were right to fear us afterall,
Even with our best intentions, we broke your fragile back.

In mystical Judaism,
Each time one is very sick, or
Faces extreme, threatening adversity,
One is given a
New name, to add on to the names one was given when they entered this world
[adversity some might say in its own right]
I have so many names
Each one the hope of a
New life
Was once Avram Tzvi Ben Aryeh Leib
Now Sarit Michelle Ben-Aryeh
I will collect one day,
A hundred names
I know I will face a
Hundred adversities
Let my names then fill a page
Let my lives fill a hundred books

In Gratitude

When I got my new powerchair
I wanted her to feel like mine
Like
Some extention of my being
Legs because mine no longer work the way they did, or
Wings because I never had them to begin with
Except I did
I didn't know that my ancestors had carried me for a million years already
Would carry me for a million more
When I got my new powerchair
I wanted her to feel like mine
To name her and so I went to my community
The ones who'd given her to me
And I asked them
But none of the names felt right
Until I thought of what she does
What she is
Like my ancestors- those who've taught me/who teach me how to live in this new body
She carries me
And that's what I'll call her
She Carries Me

For every hard assed, soft hearted Femme who has other Femmes' backs when the shit goes down

For every Femme who already knows, who teaches others that there's an "after this" where the air is still clean

For every Crazy, Sick and/or Crip Femme who spends precious spoons just to stand with other Femmes in crisis, or even just reaches out to say "I see you"

Thank you.
I see you too.
And I love you with
All I've got.

Head back
Arms out
Legs kick
Kick
kick
Gulp air
Hold breath
Waves crashing overhead again.

Give me new faith shine
Something on me
In me
Give me new light
This dusty carcass is crumbling and only the darkness shows through its holes
Give me new light
Shine in Shine out
This
Dental floss sewn duct tape sealed shit can't carry me much further

Tits and Sass By and about sex workers The End of The Life: Leaving Sex Work Because Of Progressive Illness

My newest piece, published in Tits and Sass:

This is a hard piece for me to write, because everything I’m about to describe is still very fresh.

Two years ago, the all-over body pain and extreme exhaustion I’d been dealing with began to become more common. But I was still only using my cane sporadically, allowing me to work the stroll and occasionally go on outcalls from Backpage.

The doctors had confirmed fibromyalgia, as well as chronic fatigue syndrome. At the time, these diagnoses felt validating. The body pain, the spasming tendons and odd stabbing pains that I could name—this one felt like a rusty railroad spike going up through my foot, another like a piece of rebar traversing my torso diagonally, another like needles being shoved under my fingernails—were not my imagination, nor was the exhaustion that kept me sleeping for 19-plus hours a day, often for weeks at a time.

I was still occasionally able to make it out without my cane at this point. It had become a comfort and it provided a sense of security, a way to signal a request for patience when I was unable to move as quickly as others, and it allowed relief from the pains that shot like lightning up the bones of both my legs. But I knew that as a fat, tattooed, (although cis passing) trans woman, the cane would work against me on the stroll. Though I was 47 at the time, I easily passed as closer to 30 (the “Trans Fountain of Youth”?). But sex work is mean. Anything that detracted from cis-hetero-able-bodied standards of beauty meant lost income, so I leaned a lot. I’d stop by the church gates and rest, half-hoping I’d go unnoticed so I could regain a bit of my strength, half-hoping I’d be noticeable enough to catch a car date without having to move to more lucrative stretches of the stroll.


About nine months ago, a friend in one of the sick and disabled communities I’m in on Facebook suggested that from the sound of my symptoms— in addition to those listed above, I’d developed brain fog, my exhaustion was becoming markedly worse, and I suffered from dizziness, cracking and popping joints, arthritis, and more, that I should be tested for Lyme. Since Medicaid and most insurances don’t cover adequate testing, she offered to pay the $256.50 to cover my test through IgeneX. I took her up on her offer, and sure enough, I tested positive for not only Lyme, but Babesia, Bartonella, and later, through other testing methods, Mycoplasma, Candida, and heavy metal poisoning. Lyme Disease is a tick-borne autoimmune disease; once you’ve got it, your body is open to countless other comorbid conditions.

They say the first year of treatment is the worst. That the die off, especially of Lyme bacteria, is slow and releases toxins like ammonia into the body, exacerbating symptoms. For the past nine months, I’ve slept an average of 22 hours a day, five-six days a week. I’ve developed POTS, Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome, a condition whereby when I go from lying down to sitting or standing, my blood pressure suddenly drops and my heart rate soars to triple digits, often resulting in immediate black-out fainting. Most recently, I’ve begun suffering from MCS, Multiple Chemical Sensitivity. I can no longer tolerate exposure to most artificial and some natural scents without my lips, tongue, nasal passages, skin, and throat burning, and dizziness and a pounding migraine developing within seconds of exposure.

It’s this most recent development that’s been the most life changing in terms of my ability to return to the stroll. Until I developed MCS, I held onto the hope that after this first year of treatment, the “hell year”, I’d be able to go back to work. But let’s be real here; men do like their scents, don’t they? If they bathe at all, they seem to love their Irish Spring, or other deodorant soaps, not to mention Axe (the worst!) and cologne. Even something as seemingly innocuous as the detergent or fabric softener used to wash their clothes can set off a profoundly debilitating reaction in me.


Not having enough spoons. (Photo by Flickr user Iris Slootheer)

This all feels so raw. It was just this past week that I had to buy a respirator mask just to go through the lobby of my building, where the super has placed a plug-in air freshener, and the elevator, that’s mopped daily with something heavily scented.

It was also within the last couple of days that I realized how bitterly ironic it is that I, like many of us, came to sex work because of a lack of privilege, as well as the confluence of mental illness, autism, and chronic illness that precluded me from being able to hold down conventional employment (I’ve literally never not been fired from a civvie job). Now it’s a chronic illness that’s making me unable to stay in sex work.

I can’t begin to say how heartbreaking it all feels. It’s like the end of a life, and I’m afraid of losing closeness with so many people who’ve become my chosen family.

Sex work has never been easy for me; being very niche, I’ve never been high volume. It was never empowering, but as a crazy, autistic, chronically sick and crippled trans Femme, it was a way for me to cheat capitalism a bit. It helped me do something that people like me aren’t meant to do in this world: it helped me breathe. By simply sucking cocks in a dark car, I was able to make something above the bare minimum that I get from SSI. Sex work was access in an inaccessible world. What’s more, it’s given me a community I’ll always treasure and support in any way I can.

The sad and ironic thing is that what brings so many of us to this work can in so many cases be exactly what eventually makes it impossible for us to carry on.

There is no safety net for most of us. There’s no such thing as a union or pension fund. But maybe there can be. We’ve built support collectives like Lysistrata, following historical models like the Workman’s Circle and the Black Panthers in attempting to create self-sustaining funds for our marginalized community the way they did for theirs. Maybe one day these things can become the space from which we build a fund to support not only workers who are struggling, but those of us who have lost our able bodiedness and had to retire. A whore can dream.

For Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
1.
"If I'd've seen you someplace, I'd've thought you were a straight girl" was the day I went home and shaved half my head
Undercut
"Femme Visibility Cut"
7 months later for my birthday, I got the word, "Femme" tattooed in black above my cleavage.

2.
When I met you at Bluestockings, we had the same haircut
Proud gray roots
#FemmesOver40
But yours was dyed pink at the ends, and on your chest,
Where mine said "Femme" was the word "home"

3.
I'm sitting at a table in the Met Life building in Midtown Manhattan, waiting for the charger port on my phone to be fixed. My overwhelmed autistic ears are stuffed with rolled up halves of a paper napkin, an insufficient measure to block out the large wall mounted TV tuned to CNN, and the men around me taking up too much space with their voices.
I've been re-reading "Love Cake", and I'm writing this longhand on a piece of stenographer's paper with a pen I borrowed from the front desk on top of its cover.
In the picture inside, you have a full head of hair, and I wonder if someone once made you feel invisible. I want to tell you, that even without the undercut, the tattoos or the "switchblade hip switch"
If I had seen you in the wild
I would have seen you right away
Queer, Brown, Hard Femme
Because we are not invisible
We take up more space than these chattering men, CNN and Midtown put together
Just by being the
Unbreakable bitches we are
But until I picked up your books,
Found your words when I lacked my own
I might never have discovered this Femme/home.

When Tired began for me, I didn't know the language to tell you
Tired
Like an 8 hour shift as the "sandwich specialist" at Burger King
Covered in grease and sesame seeds, with a 2 and a half hour bus commute both ways in the South Florida heat
Tired
Like the time I broke down sobbing in the Galil- that riverbed hike through the mountains, over slippery rocks the size of Volkswagen Beetles
I didn't know yet I was sick then
Only that my body was giving up
Tired
Like waking up now Taking shower Brushing teeth and collapsing twice on the bed between steps to pant for half an hour
Tired
Like smiling and saying everything's ok
I'm fine
I'm so glad to be here
I've missed you
Because I am
And I have
And I don't have the strength to shoulder your guilt
When Tired began for me
I didn't know the language to tell you
That there is no language for this kind of Tired
But drowning
Slowly
Too much effort to fight for air.

For all the sick and crippled Brown and Black queers still awake at 4:47 AM on a Thursday

In Praise of waking up- or more accurately still being up at 4:47 on a Thursday morning
In Praise of IBS with cramps that threaten to send bodily waste out both ends at a time, and make you think of that scene in Braveheart when Mel Gibson's guts are being pulled from his living body and wound around a spiked and thorny skewer; he was an amateur. (We know this.)
In Praise of cracking knees, popping elbows, shoulder joints that no longer rotate and the pain that reminds us of that when we try to put our bed-side arm up under our pillows so we can lie on our side
In Praise of Herxing, with daily migraines, dizziness, hives and hands so swollen you can barely bend your fingers
In Praise of shit that smells like ammonia
In Praise of boldly canceling plans at the last minute because you're not sure which tricks your body is going to play on you today, but you're pretty sure she's cooking something up
In Praise of shooting pains brought on by having to adjust your gait because of other shooting pains
In Praise of bed, where you'll spend countless hours, often lacking the energy to get up to pee
In Praise of neuro symptoms like brain fog, loss of hearing,
Stumbled, slurred and stuttered speech, and feeling like your skin is on fire
Or maybe cold and soaking wet
And on that note
In Praise of night sweats
And day sweats and anytime sweats, even at 20°F
In Praise of night time rituals- the taking of so many tinctures, and so many pills it's almost a meal in itself (you jokingly call the open handful of your pills "fruit salad")
In Praise of morning pill rituals too
In Praise of being the cranky ass sick crip who demands space in this world that constantly tries to squeeze you out,
or at least make you invisible
I raise my purple cane and point it at the sky for you,
For me
In Praise of us, and all we have to teach the next generation of chronically sick crippled Brown and Black queers.
We shape this world build scaffolding of our bones and stories
Our lives are not inconvenient
We Stay Here.

I speak to you of my people- the dispossessed, the powerless the oppressors and the oppressed, the colonizers, the colonized
I tried to express the nuances, and how
We are no monolith, despite the places
We Call Home
How, even in this temporarily "safe" space
Our bodies, our genes remember each diaspora,
Every pogrom
Every displacement and rape
Each edict and genocide
The mass graves and the
Stench of every oven
Tried to explain
Transgenerational inhereted trauma,
The ways each of us carries millions of individual traumas in our cells
These horrors that were
Not our own /Are our own
But to you these things are academic
Things to be analyzed
"Not an excuse"
(I'd never said/say they were)
I said, they are the pain with which we stitch together-
Through Savta, through Saba, through Mother, through Father, through child
This ragged tapestry- this hole filled quilt
Disjointed because we are
Not one people/Are one people
But you cover us all with it, call it a flag
I will not wear a flag
But this ragged tapestry, this
Heavy, hole filled quilt is also mine
And while you can see it, pick apart its threads, critique the spacing of its stitches,
Only we who carry it know its true weight.

A note to myself:
Write your truth
Do not apologize
Do not seek approval
Listen to Anne Lamott
Do NOT seek approval
IT'S TOXIC
it's toxic
So write your own truth
Write your OWN truth
Tell all your stories
The messier, the better
Open your wounds
Poke around inside
Carefully though
No need to reinjure yourself
There are your stories
Do you feel them? Their edges?
What are they like, is the blood still fresh?
These are your stories
Tell them
Tell them
Tell them and maybe
You'll start to heal.

Today has been so long. It feels like this morning was weeks ago.
I'm feeling very small tonight. I feel myself shrinking, and everything is so big. It feels like I'm a mite, and toppled skyscrapers are being piled atop me.
I am so small that I can crawl out between their gaps and maybe dissappear.
Maybe.

For Kyla, Leah and Kay, and all my Teachers who Teach me to Survive

First of all, floundering is part of the process
There will be voracious googling to make sense of each new diagnosis
Tumblr and Facebook groups will become your
Can't-sleep-middle-of-the-night comfort places
"Pain"- a word everyone seems to think they understand
Has a different meaning for you now
"Exhausted" too
If you're an extrovert
You may start to feel like you're dissappearing as
Fewer and fewer invitations to join your friends come through
Not that you could go anyway 
But you hold on to "maybe"
In the beginning
By the day
Then by the week
Soon you're wondering if certain months might be kind enough to unshackle you from your bed for an afternoon
One day you'll discover another voice 
One that feels like it comes from your own heart
This might feel like joy that could burst from your pain filled ribcage like broken glass through tissue paper
Little by little
Through community
You'll begin to make sense of some things
Burbur and lemon water bring quicker relief from your migraines than Excedrin or any narcotic
Lavender tea for twitching muscles
Narcotics help some things too
Crystals and herbs and sleep are powerful medicine
Help will come from corners you didn't know were there
You'll attain new living ancestors-
A "Crip Fairy Godmother" and a "Mama", both chronologically younger than you
Both hundreds of years older in Sickness wisdom
You'll learn that
Sometimes "medicine" isn't something you ingest
But space
Time
Compassion
Patience and
The forgiveness you take for yourself

TW: sexual assault

I was 19,
My parents hadn't noticed yet, the budding breasts that grew under my black tshirts
Street bought Premarin and Provera
I covered them in the South Florida heat in the same motorcycle jacket I still wear
Face sweating off concealer I'd applied too thick
No one to teach me
No one to tell me how much better it'd work to cover the blue beard shadow if I dabbed on a layer of lipstick, red/red, under the concealer
No one to teach me,
Use powder to set
No YouTube, or Internet, this was 1987.
I remember how thrilled and scared I was when approached in the Xtra parking lot by a man who asked for my number, even though I was dressed
Butcher than butch
That was also the year I was forced to blow a biker who called himself Satan, the broken tip of his fishing knife pushed
hard against the side of my neck

I discovered my bravery in Femme a little bit, before my parents kicked me out that year.
Door knocker earrings- my other punk friends made fun of me. Terri just looked at me, shook her head and smirked outside of Jonestown on South Beach.

No one taught me Femme. It was something I pulled out of myself like teeth.

When I first came out as trans, I did it in small, scared steps,
So used to this body belonging to
Everyone but me.
When I came fully into my Femme,
It was violent, like being born.

He knows despite the Harm Reduction Outreach backpack
"I'm not working tonight though sweetie, you need any cleans? Cookers, cottons, ties?"
He knows he can have me anyway,
because I'm Femme, because I'm Trans,
Because this is the stroll.
As we walk back to my car, parked on a side street, away from streetlights,
still a fishbowl, still a silent prayer for
invisibility & safety, I ask him quietly
"how much do you want to spend tonight?"
He knows the local prices but I
get him up to 35 and covered.
When we get into my gray Hyundai,
windows dirty enough from the
road salt and backsplashed FDR slush to
hopefully afford a little more privacy,
he notices on my dashboard,
the purple, Styrofoam, glittered skull,
the two plastic Christmas Disney Princess snow globes from Duane Reade,
the dried roses and dogwood blossoms.
"You don't seem like someone who'd be into this shit" he laughs,
as I lock the doors,
peel off my leather jacket,
and dig out a fresh condom from the plastic bag on the floor behind his seat.

I would scrape the capitalism from my bones, but how,
When it's my first impulse to let you build a shelter from my ribcage?
Just please always live in it
Please, always keep it warm

I write because I constantly feel like Im dissolving
into my role as caretaker
into my own sick and sweaty bed
into daynightdaynight22-24hoursaday
into just another tranny whore
into everyone else's ideas of who I am
I write because I so often want to dissolve
into nothingness
I write because part of me is still rooted in resistance
I write for my own resurrection
I write so that I might meet myself
again and again and again

1.
I dreamt of some future museum
(A memorial, like Yad V'Shem)
Here, in New York
And, instead of shoes
There was a pile of canes.

2.
If such a place should come to exist,
I hope that the curator
will tell all the crips
Who come to remember
To pick a cane,
To carry it with them
To let it support them
So that our stories might too be carried forth.

I want to write axes
write bullets
bricks
& bats
Want to write bombs to bust this world wide open
This Mayday, (which our dictator wants to rebrand as his "Day of Loyalty")
This day of our rage
We sick
We crippled
We poor
We brown
We Queer
We trans
We lie in bed
Our bodies, furnaces of blistering flames
Our knees, hips, elbows and spines,
crusted with stiffening rust
And words are all we have to throw.

Weeks disappear between the sweaty, dirty sheets of my sick bed.
I want so badly to be the Warrior Cripple, but instead, I feel helpless.
I twitch and
jerk in pain,
sweat and shiver and
lose myself
in disconnected thoughts of
ending my own life.
I think about the
paramedics who'll
collect my corpse; likely with needle still leaning from my arm.
will they misgender me? Will they notice more the 4 days of stubble than they will my
Painted nails, or my tits?
As they
zip
me into that
taupe, plastic bag, will they
tell my partner how sorry they are, as they
strap my stiffening body to the wheeling gurney, load me into the elevator, into Coroner's van, and as they
Fish in pockets for exact change at the counter of the the corner Bodega
stopping for coffee, a Pepsi and a bag of Cheetos
will they laugh, and tell the visual, and say
"First one of the night
You see everything in New York"?

I used to have a sticker on the back of my phone, one of those label maker ones that said in black and white, "aphasia",
for when I couldn't remember the word for
not being able to remember words

Aphasia
It's a beautiful, velvet blue and twinkling yellow light, a god dammed Van Gogh painting swirling to life
A goddess who hoards the wealth of our crippled experiences, doling them back to us- stories to whisper or text to trusted loves

Aphasia
Even now my mouth feels its shape, the "s" that strokes the inside point of my jaw's joints

Allodynia has always been another favorite of mine I
wrote once of the conflict of having to explain to a partner that her
overzealous touches- though appreciated were too much
About having "to cover her bruised heart with my
Burning skin"
This is Allodynia

I wish my clouded brain would allow me to write an ode to the beautiful language of sickness
Instead I tell myself "be content,
You were able to honor two of your favorites."
I don't yet know a special word for that
For adapting
For learning compassion for
self
for learning to be ok with less.

Sometimes I lie in bed and wait for the pain
Because the pain is familiar
Because the pain maps this body, this invisible body
Taken from me
So many times
Taken from me by
So many others
Taken from me

The pain
makes me real
When I am without it, I am
a ghost

I want to be
No more No
Pain aching thighs, knees, hips
Elbows locked
Hands burning, forearms warning
Loose
Useless grip
Ribcage, even skin
sore to the touch
How many words for pain?
How many ways to balance its deficit? How many ways to gently
(protectively)
tell your lover that her
enthusiastic touch is
too much right now
and not have to move precious energy to her
And not have to cover her bruised heart with
your burning skin?

There's an ache in me that supplants the bones
The muscles
steals the voice
There's an ache
And it's bigger than the power in your
enfolding arms

And when I say "I love you",
I say it
knowing you've heard it
a thousand times
I say it
knowing that it sounds
mundane
Or perfunctory
I say it
knowing that sometimes you must feel awkward
like you're
being forced to
acquiesce to something
(or worse, to reciprocate)
And finally
I say it
because I feel fragile
And because if I don't
the force
might burst through my
already crumbling foundation

"Actually, " I said, "I'm 46"
"No way," he said, "How do you even 46?" he asked, enthusiastically, in hipster speak.
I didn't know what to tell him until I'd
crossed the
Williamsburg Bridge
I thought,
You break,
many times,
you break, and you bleed, and you
heal, to
break again.
And each time you break, it
Hurts a little bit more,
But you
Bleed a little bit less.

So,  because I have no filter,  and because I believe in living without apology,  (even though much of the time I feel like I need to apologize for my existence,) and because I believe that the most vital activism is personal,  and often a little dangerous,  I want to talk about something that happened today in therapy: I was diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder.  
I'm only beginning to learn exactly what that means. 
I know that there are a lot of stigma and assumptions around it,  and that many of them are completely wrong.  I know that it's inextricably tied to having survived years of violent and sometimes deadly abuse at the hands of ignorant,  intolerant,  queerbashing bigots, and two sexual assaults that happened to occur during seminal periods of my life when I should have been building a sense of self.  I know,  thanks to a wonderful friend of mine who also lives with BPD and has an amazing blog on the subject,  that my extremely heightened sense of empathy,  something I developed as a survival mechanism,  is a part of BPD.  

Being diagnosed with something that carries such a stigma is scary,  but having a name for why I spend so much of my life feeling disconnected from others and empty inside,  or why I've dealt with suicidality since I was 8 years old,  or why I have such an intense fear of abandonment, feels oddly hopeful;  I know I'm not the only one in the world anymore, and for that,  I'm thankful. 

I can breathe
I can breathe because
Although I'm terrified whenever I see a blue uniform,  I pass easily as white,  so chances are,  their attentions are elsewhere.
I can breathe because if I do get stopped for any number of reasons,  chances are,  I'll go home after little more than a desk appearance.
I can breathe because 
Although I am trans,  queer,  poor,  disabled,  of mixed non-European  heritages, pierced,  tatooed etc., in this country,  even after a civil war, Selma, Dr. King,  Malcolm X, and countless others who fought for dignity and equality, my skin tone alone, an accident of birth,  still grants me greater privelege. 
I can breathe because
I am not Eric Garner,  Michael Brown,  Trayvon Martin, Tarika Wilson,  Tamir Rice,  Yvette Smith,  etc.  etc.  etc.  etc. 
I can still breathe
Until however,  my siblings are safe
I will not breathe free. 
I will not breathe free. 

For Ferguson

They are pulling the people's teeth
One by one
by one by one

This is how it  will work: 
First they take your freedom,  your autonomy and your choices.  
Then,  they take your hope, until you think you've nothing left.  
Finally,  they take your voice,  so that no one can hear you scream.  That's when you take to the streets.  
When you've little to lose but your own life.
That's when you become their worst nightmare.

This is a lesson they'll never understand. 

Long the egg had labored under the belief that deep inside her, she held life, just like other eggs.
She spent her days in warm thought of what that life would be. One day, while eggling about in eggy ways, she bumped into another egg.
"She was so heavy", she thought, "I think I've cracked my shell. "
She felt the spot that was still warm from the contact, and sure enough, there was a crack.
"Oh dear", she said to herself, "I'll have to patch that", and that's exactly what she did.

The patch held well for quite some time, and the egg enjoyed being as eggy as possible. "Afterall," she'd say, "we eggs are delicate. We do get cracks sometimes, but it's hardly reason to sit in the nest! What kind of life is that? "
One day, the egg decided to go to an egg party. It was the egg event of the year, so she readied herself carefully, polishing her patched shell, artfully fraying the edges of her patch, and checking herself in the mirror over and over again.
When she got there, there were so many eggs! Some were- like her, beige, others were white, some were brown, and some were small and blue with brown specks, but all of them were oh, so beautiful.
"Finally", she said to anyegg who might be listening, "I feel like I'm home. "
As she egged herself through the beautiful crowd, she found herself bumped from every side. It felt so warm, this contact with other eggs, but she became worried about her delicate, already patched shell, and decided she'd better go to the restroom, and make sure the damage wasn't as bad as she feared.
She waited in the line, and when it was her turn, she shut and locked the door behind her and looked at herself in the tiny, high mirror.
The damage was in fact, worse than she'd thought: she'd developed a pit, where several cracks joined together.
"It's so unfair, " she thought, "all these other eggs, bumping into each other, and they're all fine, but I try to do what they do, and I break.
She began to sob, and as she did, her little eggy body was filled with shakes and quakes, which only served to worsen the cracks.
"Oh dear, " she said, over and over again, "oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. I don't know what to do. These other eggs are so beautiful, and feel so heavy with life and warmth, and when I'm alone, I miss their warmth and heaviness and life! Oh dear, oh dear oh dear oh dear! " she cried.
Eventually, another egg knocked on the restroom door, for while she'd been inside, a line had developed, so she blew her eggy nose, and wiped her eggy eyes, and when she did, the pit that had fallen in on her eggy forehead, collapsed into her. She was stunned, and scared, and she hoisted her eggy self closer to the tiny mirror to inspect the damage. When she looked closely, she could see, and she understood: the other eggs had felt so heavy, so warm and full of life to her, because all along, unlike them, she'd really been only an empty shell.

We were born into worlds that weren't built for us,
We've jostled and twisted,  just to be able to feel like we could breathe. 
We have been octagonal pegs in square holes,  and there's not one amongst us who hasn't known the strike of the hammer that tried- through force,  to make us fit. 
We've been "problems that need to be addressed", and "why can't you just be normal"s.
We know what it is to be the butt of jokes,  and then told that we take these things far too personally. 
We have been beaten,  raped, and stripped of our identities and bodily autonomy  and, when one of us is murdered,  as so many of us have been,  and as so many of us will be,  we know that we will likely be  misgendered,  and slandered by media,  and maybe even family,  even after we are dead.  
We are not pathetic clowns; we paint ourselves brightly because our lipstick is war paint,  and our lives are a daily war in a world that's determined to marginalize us, to humiliate us,  and to kill us. We may lose this battle,  but we will win this war. 
Stonewall was only the beginning. 

Because, even though you're a straight, cis man, I'm supposed to feel safe around you because we're related, but when you get drunk, you "can't be held accountable",

Because when I tell you I don't want to have a conversation about my breasts you go on to tell me that they "look like they could use a good manhandling",

Because when I tell you it's not a compliment, and that you're making me uncomfortable, you value your own ego too much to lay off,

Because when I reveal to you, that I was sexually assaulted when I was fifteen, you feel entitled to tell me I'm making YOU uncomfortable with "too much information",

Because you feel entitled enough, to break me down into the parts of my body, to weigh them for my worthiness,

And because
After all this, you tell me, I have no sense of humor,
and that I'm
"overreacting".

#YesALLWomen

I was fifteen.
He was nineteen.
We had drama class together.
We went to the same school.
He invited me over.
"We'll hang out", he'd said.
He answered the door in
"tighty whities".
I followed him into the dark in-
terior of his house.
In his room, a super 8 projector machine-gunned silent 70's porn onto his wall.
He sat on the floor, his back against the
metal closet door.
In his lap, he'd placed a
two-handed vibrating massager,
the kind, I remember thinking,
Burgess Meredith might have run over Rocky's back before a fight.
He asked if I wanted to help.
He'd framed it as a question,
An option,
A request, but
It wasn't.
Afterwards,
He made me hide
crouched down on the floor of the frontseat of his parked car,
Under the steering wheel
In his unlit driveway,
for four and a half hours, until after midnight.
Until his parents were home,
until they were in bed,
until they were asleep.

I wish that I could take a picture of a feeling:
Humidity free, May morning air on the skin of my upper arms-
seventy degrees, yet
still,
a small chill
Crystal yellow sunlight, too developed I think for eight, but the sun's been up for a while now
(my winter tempered internal clock?)
And the smell:
Our Upper East Side block smells like Florida
(I wonder, will anyone understand what I mean?)
I wish
I could take out my cellphone and snap a picture of all this
Then I realize:
Standing squinting shivering slightly smelling feeling
Thumbs swiping
o'er my phone's keyboard,
That that's exactly
what I've done.

a radical declaration

I love this body,
MY body,
My fat, trans, hairy, femme, invisibly crippled, inconvenient, queer and capable of fucking miracles body
Every curve,
every roll,
every hairy fucking follicle
I love that the simple act of eating a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos in public
is a revolutionary act
I love that I take up space,
And I love that this pisses off all the right people
I love my body, and I'm gonna celebrate it, in
loud, bright, short, crop tops that show off this beautiful, round tummy,
And short skirts that show the world these
powerful thunder-thighs,
By dancing in bliss, and loving
every movement of my fat,
And by fucking and owning every ounce, pound, and inch of my pleasure.
I love this body, and I'll keep on loving it, because
according to just about
every magazine,
every TV show and commercial,
every movie that would relegate me to the role of
one dimensional comedic sidekick,
and every "concerned" comment on posted picture of myself in a bikini,
I am unloveable
I'm a joke
but I know that that's not true
because
I love this body
and all the other
fat, full-figured, zaftig, obese, beautiful and perfect folx with whom I share this body,
And who's bodies I am privileged to love,
know,
and they can tell you
that this fat, trans, hairy, femme, invisibly crippled, inconvenient, queer, miraculous fucking body will
rock your fucking world.