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.

ANGER

One of the feelings I have frequently is anger. People in pain are often angry. Pain can be invisible, and for a long time, I tried to make sure it remained invisible: suppressing winces, groans, tears. Those things emerged, of course -- one can't hold those things in forever.

There are also the psychological dimensions. I've been told that what I've been doing a lot of is bargaining. I keep coming up with bargains. Maybe if I keep going to work, I won't be injured. Maybe if I don't eat sugar, I won't be injured. Maybe if I do these stretches, I won't be injured. Maybe if I take these pills, I won't be injured. Maybe if I walk to the mailboxes and back, I won't be injured. Maybe if I keep my feelings a secret, I won't be injured.

So I can't be surprised that people don't know. I can't be surprised that people expect me to be operating at full capacity if I don't tell them how much pain I'm in -- if I don't tell them that the drugs make me feel like I'm under water, or in a snow drift, or stippled by pins. I can't count change at the grocery store, or look for a lost shoe, or fold paper evenly, or spell.

I'm angry. I want my life back. I want to be able to move forward with my life plans. I want to be able to write poem, finish a story, visit with friends. I want to be able to sit in a movie theater, drive my car, put on my underwear -- I want to do things without feeling the searing, excruciating pain.

I want people to be nice to me.

Pain has a sort of myopia. I notice things like the textures of clothing: so many things are too itchy and my skin is on fire. The drugs give me dry mouth and everything tastes awful. I'm hyper-attentive to the ice pack, the heating pad, the myriad analgesic jams and jellies that smell sticky-sick and sweet, the dilapidated mountains of pillows upon which I try to arrange my body like a bag a of broken sticks or rusty hinges.

I do not want to feel guilty about building up a tolerance to the drugs.

I do not want to be hysterical.

I hate myself for being so self-absorbed.

together, we make our reality real.

I forget without you. String little

hellos in the baby's gurgle. Slippers

in daylight, all this gray turned

to sparkle. The stillness

in bedclothes: wondering

wakefulness. The bend

in my spine: still here.

It feels like it is taking forever: this healing. It takes a long time. It's an orange color, like oil. Liquid gold. Rusted iron in the twirls, marshland habitat. Red throated birds call out to us. We're taking forever: too long.

I dream of being organized. of being out of pain. of having a gut full of crystals: opiate residue. Like the crystals that consumed the box for the oil gusher in the gulf. crystals in the so deep it's so cold. At what point does one decide -- that's it: cut me. It's been 5 months. Is that too long to wait? Not long enough? There are moments when my mind is available, and I feel like myself, and I look at the date and I can only wonder what I've been doing. What did I do during February? Was I here? Did you see me?

clean scissors, I beg

for rescue, for a pin

to tend the pain: pink

not newly, slit red

then blue. In purple

liquids I store

the pulse: thump

thump in the dark

narcotics. Fizz-

winged, my fissures

shore: approach

the winking beacon

of a still-life body:

smooth and porous, pried

free from every

pinching reign: stung

veins and stony ventricles.

The Poetry Booth

click click click

A few kind words can go a long way. Each time someone is kind to me, I feel like breaking. The mirror silence of a still pool: ripples the weight of great lakes. Their glaciers staggered down. We measured the mountains. This small sadness I can hold in my hands, taste it on my tongue. Salt showers and the glow inside bones -- lit up, electric signs. The desert is the pain of home, the home away. This withholding -- it makes me long for it all the more. Sympathy is a craving. The stone around us turns to ice.

Don't say "spill," say "gusher."

I cant stop thinking about the oil, the pressure, the spindletop, and how deep below the water's surface the top of the well is, and then the depth of the well itself. I watch videos and there are pop-up ads for free oil stock reports and the coast guard GI bill. The crooks are hiding in plain sight. On the major news network, the reporter talks over the academic. There are so many things that we are not allowed to see.