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

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?