You read to me the words
Of Marina Tzvetaeva
As much for the pleasure their shapes make in your mouth
As the sound of your voice
Does my ears
But you can understand them:
A luxury I can't afford
Only can I watch your face
Suffuse with the pleasures
Of nostalgia
And that alone for me is enough.
Of all things, it's an image of the roughly woven, off white, textile curtains that hang in what was my father's office, (which used to be the family room) in the Miami house that haunts my thoughts right now; this specific, and unimportant element of nostalgia, that witnessed the daily, evening ritual in the early 80s when we'd gather after dinner on the roughly upholstered couch to watch that day's episode of Guiding Light on the VCR, that- once turned from family recreation space into my father's workspace, hung silently behind my mother's back on those sleepless nights she'd play Freecell at my father's computer whilst softly listening to Schubert's "Trout" on CD, that witnessed my father's endless frustrations, cursing over computer, after computer, after computer down the years that he could never quite wrangle to his will..
Those curtains, like the corners of the produce section in the neighbourhood Winn Dixe I used to visualise on hot, lonely nights when I couldn't sleep in Kfar Habad..
When everything is threateningly unfamiliar, it's trivial things– specific and trivial, even mundane things that offer a feeling of safe familiarity. This is the true lure of nostalgia; because we have already survived the past, and the only thing the future promises, is that we won't.
Meital shifted her weight on the hard crate and looked at the tall, covered mirror her mother had once stood in front of, shifting her weight from this foot to the other, tugging this piece of her blouse and tucking in that bit; always making sure she was "just so" before walking out the door.
The neighbours, who weren't Jewish didn't know the customs of shiva, but they did all they could just the same; Mrs Fitzpatrick had brought over pizza the first night, (with pepperoni,) and Steven, the Super had brought up Cadbury chocolate eggs and yellow and pink marshmallow peeps, explaining that his wife had cleaned out the shelves at CVS after Easter, and that "everyone likes sugar!"
Meital agreed and swallowed the eggs like a starving dog once everyone had gone home.
Now, the sugar craving hit afresh as she sat, alone on the green crate and wished she hadn't finished the chocolate so thoughtlessly the night before. All that was left was the two packets of peeps.
"But they're so cute" thought Meital. "How can I eat something this cute?"
She took a yellow one out of the packet and held it in her hand. "Ok," she said out loud, "when I bite into you, you'll be born some place else, but as a real chick!" Meital had played games like this with herself since she was a girl. It was the only way she could bring herself to eat animal crackers. She ate the peeps, one after one and sucked the sugar off her sticky fingers.
"I wish that when we died, we could be born someplace far away but in a different form" she thought.
On a distant world, a new baby opened her orange eyes for the first time, as vague memories of someone named Meital quickly faded like a dream.
Unquiet, the yellow sun bursts excitedly through my window,
Already, in mid-March,
At April's softened slant;
She beckons me to walk
Down by the old churchyard
Count the shooting crocuses
Impatient as adolescence
But I cannot oblige her,
So, as if in consolation
She sets to fire all of the
Exuberant flecks of dust
That dance above my floor
In the cold, late Winter's air.
It's bright outside:
The seasonal slant of light has shifted again
Blue grey, to green gold
Already preparing us for
Early Spring bulbs to burst
Through hard ground
I sit sideways by my yellow table, eating
A crisp, late Winter's apple
The still cool air slips in under the lip of the window that won't quite close
Over the dusty rows of books lined up on my sill,
Like a younger lover, insistent I walk with her down to the river
Perfumed steam from the first floor — someone is doing laundry.
"I love other haunted people," she said, pouring our sixth cup of tea, "people who refuse to hide from their own ghosts, I feel like I can trust them."
I nodded and sipped from the small, heavy cup I held unnecessarily in both hands. We'd finished our meal what felt like hours before; the tea had grown strong, and ice cold. Outside, the snow was ankle deep. I asked the visibly impatient waiter for another pot.
The day my dad died
I ate my breakfast quietly
No Podcast, nor music
There were no radishes for my tartine
Afterwards,
I showered
Shaved my legs and washed my hair
The day my dad died
There were so many calls to make
The rabbi wanted me to write something up for the funeral
I couldn't remember my parents' anniversary
The afternoon of the day my dad died
I sewed shut the broken zipper on the side of a skirt
Put new laces in
My black shoes
Got the mail
Wrote a grocery list
On the evening of the day my dad died
There would be no seven o'clock
"How was your day?"
Nor "Did you eat any dinner?"
And no "I love you"s
The day after my dad died
We buried him
I watched it all on zoom
Men respectfully covered his grave
From a mound of dry, grey soil
The Rabbi spoke of my dad's smile
Intoned prayers
Bade me tear my clothes
All the while
The dishwasher purposefully hummed from the other room.
An apple core oxidised on the table before me
And outside my window
A few white flakes fell from a
High, grey sky.
The old familiar birds nest of your thin bones
Bones that nursed your cancer—
Carefully, like eggs,
Until hatched, it consumed you
Liver and spleen,
Now burst you out from that
Chalky cage.
How can I pull the
Warm light of day
Back into the darkness
Of these atrophied cells, when
Packed under layers of
Cold, wet earth
I'm already becoming
Blind like stone?
There is a reason we
Compare grief
To a black hole :
It's so massive
Inescapable
It has a gravity
All its own.
"Strong" is a trap.
"Strong" is a lie.
"Strong" denies the cracks in the foundation.
Were I a house, I would be condemned,
Not told how the cracks don't show,
How the clumps of crumbling plaster are "normal" after what I've been through, or worse,
Don't really matter at all.
I am not strong,
Nor am I weak; I am
Hollowed out, decayed and infested with the blackest mould crawling up my walls.
I am imploding;
Sinking into unstable ground.
Demons have taken up residency inside my
Derelict walls.
I decay where I stand; that is,
When I'm able to stand at all.
Mostly I sit,
Still as old bricks,
And wait for the earth
To reclaim me.
Old igneous crumb the earth has coughed up
Adrift in black and airless space
Even the stars were a
Broken promise
Cold
White and
Beautiful corpses.
Last month, my beloved partner Carrie passed away while I held her hand after a lifetime of severe illnesses. I buried her two days later on what would have been our 18th anniversary.
Today, thirty three frought days after I lost my love, I turned 54, and so naturally, shortly after I finished my birthday mug of hot chocolate, I broke down and began quietly sobbing in Max Brenner.
It wasn't loud or particularly disruptive, but if someone happened to look at me, they'd see that my shoulders were subtly shaking, and while my long hair obscured my face, when the waitress asked if there would be anything else, my voice audibly cracked as I asked for my bill.
Just across the way at another table, two tourists sat and unabashedly stared while they whispered to one another. Rude!
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, for 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 from where they come.
So I beg of 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.
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. )
Have you seen these
Slight bones of mine?
Riddled and porous with disease
You may think of them as
Well buried treasure,
(I'm sure that even the worms wait with bated breath!)
I may be pieced together with
pins, screws
Even staples in places
But I'll tell you something about this broken body :
I have stolen the mantle of Atlas,
And granted Sisyphus leave from his labours
And you
You look at me as though the weight of your discomfort alone should knock me over.
At last, no rage
At dying light,
For restless futures, no more fight
The world has won:
I set it free
I've signed the forms
I am at peace.
And in the end, you
Embraced me like an old friend you hadn't seen since college
You'd touched my arm twice
It was awkward, but it felt good
For once, to touch another heart's blood
Heart's skin, and when
At 86th Street
We said farewell
I watched you descend into
The bloodstream of the city
Emptied, I wondered the
Aisles of CVS
Bought unnecessary mascara
And eyelash serum
And then sent you
My accurate shadow
To keep.
Floating over leaden feet out from hospital halls
An automaton. Your jeans, and bra
Crumpled into the bottom of a white, plastic bag
I felt like I carried your sad body in that bag,
I moved— not quite walking
Head down hung mouthed
Fallen faced in crowds
I needed the world to see that I was broken.
"There's something to be said for widow's wear" someone told me,
And so I wore your last breath like a black veil
Over everything I touched
And allowed the discomfort
Of waitresses and taxi drivers
To lie across my body like
Grey assuagement.
If only it were permissable
To beg you to fill me with yourself
Obliterate this barrenness
Eventhough, I've no ready-made future on which to sell you
I recognise the request is preposterous
Offensive even, but look
These are my hands
Aching Empty and
This is my mouth
Alike In want
My pockets as well are now empty—
I bring nothing from before
The stones with which I had
Filled them have all been
Repatriated
And I am here, ready to share
Their mean country
Won't you pluck me from this dust
Set me upon your cool mantle
Amongst your candles
Dried hydrangea
And special things?
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.
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
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?
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
What can we learn from poor
Unica Zürn
Anne Sexton
And Sylvia Plath?
That being a poetess is bad for one's health!
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!"
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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. )
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.
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.
"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.
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."
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.
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.
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?
Posts
All Comments
