A Pale Scrawl
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Measures and mitigations

10/25/2016

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Picture
To be a woman
Is to know fear
Insidious
It alters how you speak
How you walk
What you hear
As if by simply being
You are poking the bear


Climbing stairs
You scan the periphery
Is there a man behind you?
Should you have taken the elevator?
You imagine it as a race
Legs driving you up
Away
Hoping he chooses a lower floor
As he watches you recede
There is a button
At the top
PUSH FOR HELP
Please don't make me need it
Please let it work if I do


It is only eight o'clock
You are two blocks from home
You've had dinner with a friend
She says she will walk you home
Because you don't have mace
And she does
It's such a small town
You think
Everybody knows me
But there is what if
Gnawing at the back of your mind
And you let her


You are a statistic
Waiting to happen
You may have happened already
You might again
Can you admit the trespasses?
The stranger slapping your ass
The man blocking your way on the sidewalk
Hey girl
The best friend who held you down and
No
His parents came home
Doesn't count
The measures and mitigations
Of boil versus simmer


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Accruing and losing

10/24/2016

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We spend our entire lives
Accruing and losing
Memories
And people
And things we think are important


We are trees in autumn
Shrugging off our leaves
Like heavy shawls
Growing bare to accommodate new seasons


Your mother would make homemade pudding
Spooning it still warm into cut glass goblets
The skin formed by cooling still intact
And your father
He would put milk atop it
Swirling white with chocolate brown
This you would eat so slowly
With your special spoon
Letting it glide sweet and cold and warm at the same time
Over your tongue and down your throat
This thing they made together
Consumable proof of their combined love for you




Polyester footy pajamas
Red as Bozo's nose
Scratchy on your skin
After a bath
The feet crackling as you move
A sound you hate
You're a light sleeper
You've woken to it too many times
Rolling over
Stiflingly warm
Your only option
To grab the zipper at your neck
Pull it all the way down to your belly button
Spread the flaps wide like fins underwater
And breathe back to sleep
Because you may hate that sound
But there are others you hate more




A fall day
Light playing on the still green grass
As the blades wave in the wind
You're wearing your favorite dress
Kelly green
It's a twirler
And you're spinning
So fast
But you've forgotten to keep an eye on one spot
And you stop suddenly
The world turning around you still
While your body has ceased
Everything tilts in the golden
And you fall
Knuckles scraping stone
As you try to brace for impact
Raising a hand to your mouth
Sucking away the sting
The tang of metal and salt
You're sitting in freshly disturbed earth
And everybody else is crying




You've driven hours to visit a friend
Your legs sore from lack of movement
You didn't want to stop
Only the once
Only long enough to empty your aching bladder
The house is warm
Heated by two wood stoves
Late to bed
Early to rise
Or your breath will freeze before you
You have a nervous habit
Of playing with your necklace
Sliding the clasp
Back to the precise center of your nape
But your fingers
Touch only your bare throat
The fine chain disappeared
You spend hours
Searching the cracks in the floorboards
Hoping to catch a glimpse of
Startling blue star sapphire
Or the glint of
Delicate gold swirling over itself
Your mother gave it to you
When you rode with her in the ambulance
Your father had given it to her years ago
He thought it looked like a Yes album cover
But you'd made one stop
And the wood here isn't giving up any secrets
Though your parents had given up years before
On each other
On you


Will these memories cling
Drying
Browning
But whole
To your branches?
Or will they be replaced by something else?
Greener
Fresher
And whole

















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Glowing fiercely

10/20/2016

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Picture
There are wildflower seeds
Tangled in my midnight blue hair
From my position at the bottom of a natural bowl
I can hear the wind breathe as
Waves through the trees
The sun is receding from me
Over the opposite side of the hill
Shining as an unreal spotlight
On a maple glowing fiercely despite the chill
I can't smell woodsmoke yet
The homes surrounding me
Stubborn to let summer end
But nobody is so proud as to grill their dinner, either


My shadow is impossibly long
Stretching at an angle from my feet
I feel small next to it
I expect to go inside and smell something cooking
To take off my shoes
And see my mother in the kitchen
"You smell like outside" she would say
Planting warm lips on my cool forehead
Cheeks pink against a pale face
No tan to fade


She is not here
Nobody is but a clutter of shoes
Around a junk-mail strewn dining table
A pair of cats chirping for an early meal
I would speak to them
But my voice is a croak
No amount of throat clearing will remedy
Because I have been sick
Run too far for too long on too little
With no one to tell me to slow down


I am not lonely
I am simply suffused with
The tang of melancholy on my tongue
My favorite season spent alone
For the first time in my life
The sweetness of autonomy mingling there
It tastes like possibility


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Fanged butterflies in a bell jar

10/19/2016

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Picture
Anxiety has been getting the best of me lately. I can see it in the unfolded laundry sitting wrinkled in the basket. It's in my refrigerator - I've been cooking too much and eating too little. Tsking at myself for the things slowly going rancid. What a waste. Of money. Of time. Of space. These things I also think of myself.


Blank slots of time are to be filled with activity, mindless and unimportant. Checking my phone, tidying, working out when my body is already sore. I try to read, but I'm distracted so easily. It's taken me months to finish a single book. Running out of things to do, words to say is a nasty chasm begging to swallow me.


When I get in bed at night, when I finally stop moving, exhaustion rolls over my body like a supercharged steamroller. I'm flattened beneath it. And the thoughts, without a task ahead of me, without a goal to focus on and finish, they roam to sad places, seeping through the same cracks where the exhaustion crept in. There isn't room enough inside me, so they make it for themselves by displacing saline that runs hot down my cheeks. I don't even try to stop it anymore. I just let it wash over me, allow the sobs to rack what's left of me as I pull the blankets over my head and wait for it to pass.


I never say "I'm not okay." I never say "I need help." These would be lies. Okay is an eventuality. Help won't get me there any faster. To those I trust, I will say "I can't stop crying. My eyelids are too swollen to open all the way. I just want to sleep and maybe not wake up." There are times when they will tell me that help is only a medicine cabinet and twenty minutes away. That I don't deserve to suffer alone or to suffer at all. Those are the moments when I will listen. I will kneel at the altar of modern chemistry and take the communion that separates me from the riot inside. But these moments are few. I can so easily recognize how these little yellow helpers can become a way of life. The ability to see the same thoughts in a completely new light, as if they belonged to someone else and can't touch you anymore, fanged butterflies in a bell jar.
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He did as I asked

10/18/2016

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Picture
Ten months ago today
He moved out
Garbage bags filled with clothes
Our dog
His cat


I steadied myself
Against the shoulder of my friend
As sobs shook us both
"Take care of her" he said
"I can't stay long" she told me
"Come back to the shop where
We will feed you and kiss you
And let you cry with people who love you"
I refused this offer
Chose instead to disassemble
The first bed we'd bought together
Letting my catching breath echo
Over the bare walls


Too many realistic expectations
Stacked upon his incapable back
I had unburdened myself
Of the things he should have carried
Declared I would not lift them again
A shocking revelation
From an overtired pack animal
A sudden recognition
Of self indulgence and not sacrifice


One week ago today
I ate pie for breakfast
In a brand new dress
And red lipstick
Brave face, Buttercup
For hopefully the last time
Free finally of the things that held me down


But even after so much time
The tears still come unwanted
Missing the bite marks in blocks of cheese
The smell of the inside of his ear after he'd woken
The quirky hop-step as he hurried on his way


I sleep better now
Sprawled across the too big mattress
Limbs akimbo
No longer wary that the body next to me
Will stop breathing
I don't dream of him leaving me
Waking with a start
Cold tears still wet in my hair
Because for once
He did as I asked








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Nothing else will fit

10/17/2016

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Picture
And so you go back to what you know
To the thing that stole you piece by piece
That left you a gaping maw of what once was
A wishing well
Where all the loose change thrown has been lost
Ferreted away
Hoarded
A cash cow for the one who keeps you


You tried to go back into the world
The universe from which you were snatched
But everything changed in your absence
The sun replaced by a dark spot
Houses empty
Their chimneys crumbling
Moss proliferating in the cracks
Trees grown wild
Limbs reaching for you as you passed
The echoes of lives lived buffeting you


You were so well groomed
To a specific set of skills
That adaptation no longer applies as an option
You became a tool
To be carefully wielded
By one pair of hands
Customized to their grip
Nothing else will fit


You will return
Ask nicely
To have back the comforts to your creature
Welcome the opportunity to atone
I'll be good
I'll never leave again
I'm so sorry
I need you


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This wasn't in the forecast

10/13/2016

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Picture
I woke to a lightning storm
Confused by the flashes in the dark
There was no sound yet


I woke to a lightning storm
Confused by the flashes in my heart
There were no tears yet


Storm fronts simultaneous
In their arrival
Shaking the trees
Shaking me


Leaves loosening from their limbs
Before they're ready
Torn by straight line gusts
Robbing me of their airborne pointillism


But my storm has already receded
I planted my feet as roots
Brave face to wind and world
Crying now as I'm picking up the splintered pieces


Sound and fury
Signifying everything
A grief delayed
I thought I'd already felt it all
This wasn't in the forecast




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Irish goodbye

10/11/2016

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Picture
He arrived
As we were discussing proceedings
He'd cut his hair
Was wearing his wedding shoes
He looked small
Broken
Bereft


I rose to meet him
I'd dyed my hair
Was wearing my wedding brooch
I looked tall
Chic
Proud


I put my arms around him
I'd forgotten how much shorter he is
Breathed in his smell for the last time


He sat alone
Uncounseled
As I said yes
I do
Irretrievably broken
Not pregnant


It was over so quickly
Fair and equitable
Defined as me with all the leverage
Thank you, Your Honor


He chose a variation
Of his Irish goodbye
This with a subtle wave
He knows how it's always upset me
Leaving without a word


I saw the back of him recede
Three tears escaping
As I tipped my head skyward


Since I left him
All that time ago
My life has been filled with love
Instead of loneliness
I took those from him
Harnessed them for myself


I want to reach out to him
To share what I have
But I know
From long and weary experience
That he will take it all
Leave me hoping I won't wake tomorrow


So I turn
A subtle wave
Goodbye
Best wishes
I loved you


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Chiaroscuro

10/10/2016

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Picture
I am a portrait in chiaroscuro
Projecting light
Tinged with stark darkness
A smile on my lips
That won't reach my eyes
Sadness pooling there


I've been crying a lot lately
Something I don't show unless I'm caught unaware
The moment in the coffee shop
"Like missing a step at the top of a flight of dark stairs"
All the looking up
All the don't fucking do this right now
Didn't stop the tears from slipping out the corners
Shaming me
For the feelings I still have


I was in the water for fifteen years
Treading
Arms and legs rhythmically waving
While you sat on my shoulders
Sure I inhaled a little water here and there
But I made sure we both made it
Every minute
Of every day
I didn't think I had a choice
We both go down together


The wind picked up
Tossed you away
With a wave
I didn't know I'd have to brace against
Shore was so much closer than I thought


I've been standing here in the sand
My toes are cold and pruny
And I'm watching you drown
Torn between getting in with you again
Or turning my back on the storm tossed sea
Walking away down the path through the bluffs




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The DNA of trauma

10/9/2016

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Picture
The DNA of trauma runs in my veins
A legacy of generations of violation and
Personal violence
My mother
And her mother
And her mother
And me
Survivors of physical onslaught


With eyes on the fronts of our faces
We are meant to be predators
But as women
We are prey
Trained by experience
To scent hunters on the wind
To feel boozy breath
On the small hairs of your neck
Before it lands
To deftly avoid strong fingers and palms
That will grasp you firmly and not let go
Until pale flesh blossoms blue black
To hear the words
Bitch
Whore
Cunt
Before they're spoken
To save your life
Before it's taken from you


Cells are encoded with
Hidden switches
Waiting to be thrown
Connecting the circuit
Illuminating our potential
Become large with the threat
Beat back the assailant
Send him yelping back into the woods
To lick his wounds


When you have nothing left to lose
Nothing else can be lost
Contribute everything you've got
Breed ferocity in your daughters
Instead of fear


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