I wish I could control my feelings. Everyday is like a little hill and its up up up then down down down. One little thing -- like seeing an old note -- and then the head bells and asylum and the pills. Everything is a alive and super -- outsized and fleeting. Gargantuan mists. What is that? Too big to put your arms around it. And the fingers slip through.

I think of pain like a knotted rope. One hand over the other to touch taut rope or knotted rope. The rope is rough and prickly. It makes me cough.

"But you're so young..." I feel old and broken. And yet I know one day I'll look back, shake my head at my former self. "Fool!"

I imagine another version of myself -- someone like you -- rocking back and forth on her heels, confident and brutal -- "My back is yours. Fix me, doc."

For every knot there is a shadow self who knows just what to do, knows what we should have done. Paper dolls for every bone. Paper bones. Flutter, flicker, let go.

the body is a ghost

or host to ghosts -- cells &
helicopter text ticky-type
and symptom syntax of every
physical memory crushed
into tell-all fibers
and clues -- fibbers &
the glue-clock pushing
through. The inside marks
where bone tics two by two
legs arms hands and mirrors
say two heads too. False
eyelashes and blue mascara
the blue-green veins pulled
through, suffused with pills:
powder dolls. Our little body
house too full -- there's
nothing else to do save
cutting through and then
stitch stitch new & ta-da!
it isn't them -- it's you --
the ghost you never
knew you knew.

I had a dream that a college friend and a grad school friend were both pregnant. We were all living in my childhood home in south carolina. I dream about this house every few months. In this instance, the home was in a somewhat remote location and in a state of semi-abandonment. Room flowed into room, and there were random people there -- acquaintances from college -- and there was a type of war; an impending army that would gather and descend on us. But first there was a baby. My college friend had given birth. I was surprised because she never looked pregnant, but she asked me to come see her baby. We went into the yard, and entered -- on our hands and knees -- a tight-knit grove of pine tree. We sat cross-legged on the dirt, and then a large raccoon and a smaller raccoon came into the grove. It turned out that her baby was the little raccoon, who could actually stand up and speak and was overall very impressive and polite. "You're so advanced for a baby!" I exclaimed. My friend interjected that this was true of all raccoon babies -- they develop quickly, and their raccoon form keeps them safe from soldiers. I wondered whether it was the raccoon or my friend who had given birth, and how did it work? This thought was interrupted by the approaching army. We emerged from the grove and the whole yard was filled with people exiting my old house and heading into the hills. The trick was to go underground there -- to hide and disguise ourselves. When the army arrived, they crawled all over everything -- they were like insects, beetles. But they did not see us, did not notice us. Years later, a scout from the army returned. By then we had constructed a whole village from abandoned car bodies and scrap metal and house parts. No, we told the scout, we had no idea what happened to the people who had lived in my old house. We'd been here, outside of the conflict, living quietly with our dogs and foraging the hills for food. We did not know anything about anyone else. At this point most of us had gathered underground. When we heard the scout's footsteps above us fade away, we came up for air and light.

Tumblrs

I am keeping a notebook for the women & animals and are they real project here.

I am gathering shiny things from the internets here.

My difficulty is that

______limbs_____dont't fit

__________together

cling__________what's left

___entrapment__swell

and shatter_______sparkle

drone

______in scattered cells

articulate clues

__________vertebrae

I choose to arrest

___________my face

behaves_________ in saviors

______mirrors