Recovery is the New Category

& there are new types of victories. The pill countdown, the pain's clean edge, tart and bright as a razor -- so defined, no longer muffled or suffuse. It dwindles to this hard clean edge the glows like neon in the dark. I am aware of parts of my body & I search for pictures: networks and ribbons. And there are phantoms that wander over my skin, a new type of radiculopathy -- syndrome spreading sensations from point a to point b -- something is felt where nothing touches. & there's a pulse to it, like waves.

post post-op

a thing happens like turning down the corner of the page, and the next page is there. a turning down that feels a bit like a seeing through. a counting down of pills. dreams of apple trees growing inside silver, financial cones. a sort of institutionalized kindness that is just good enough. just seeing through. how the disembodied becomes you again. yes, this is my head, my hair. I'm seeing through. I try to wear jeans, but the incision seam is still there, up my back like a zipper, the plastic stitches underneath my skin. For weeks, it bubbled. "an allergic reaction." this is what my surgeon said. my surgeon? I want to ask him what he saw when he looked inside me. I want to say "describe it." I feel shy asking questions, ask my husband to take notes. In the car, I ask him over and over, "what else did he say?" and "how did I seem?" How do I seem? Am I here? The bottles collect like...a snowdrift of bottles -- everything in the orange RX. but recovery is the new category.

I survived!

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.

Fear

The recurring image is that I'm on some sort of conveyor belt heading toward chopping jaws -- serrated, hungry -- and I can't get off.

There is too much information. It is too confusing.

The system is overwhelmed.

There is more bargaining.

There is a fantasy of being disembodied, serene. Another fantasy is of being buoyant, tranquil. There is water and sun and warmth.

Today, we walked on the bluffs that overlook the beach. I was iced, medicated. It is our fifth wedding anniversary. I scan the horizon for breaching whales, diving pelicans, otters floating in the kelp. We hold hands and I am so thankful that I am not alone, although I resent the injury and how it has taken over my body, our lives. Later, down the path, a rabbit darts out of the brush and pauses, one paw raised, and then scampers off. Two girls pull a wagon full of pillows, and atop the pillows is another girl. She is lazily eating from a box of fig newtons They're playing a game, they tell us, and I feel happy for them. The ocean air is sweet and crisp and I imagine leaping off the cliff into the waves. I crave the weightlessness of being in water.

The thing is, I'm terrified of having surgery, and today, as I read through the files I'd requested from the doctor's office, I see that all the arrows point to it. I'm worried that if I decline surgery, I will be punished. I've been told the my condition will be declared "permanent and stationary." I took messy notes in shorthand, but how can I remember in this haze? It's happening too fast.