Dear 2019 and the years before that,

I learned that the color of a bruise is synonymous to the sky right before a storm. And just like the sky, the body can thunder and lightening itself until it is unrecognizable.

There are billions less birds flying above us. Instead of the flapping of wings, we hear clouds tangle and cough like flu victims. I walked around the Metropolitan Museum of Art and lost count of the humans wearing face masks. I held my breath for as long as I could. What are we really breathing in?

Blame it on the squall.

I learned that articulating the correct pronoun can save a life.

Sometimes the most difficult decision one can make in a day is to turn off their Internet.

Sometimes the second most difficult decision one can make in a day is to exist for twenty-four hours and post zero photographs of what you ate.

Learned how to embroider; learned how to walk outside; learned I can stay inside; learned how to say no; learned how to leave without causing a scene; learned how to sit still (even if just for five minutes); learned how to approach my body (carefully, as though we are meeting each other for the first time);

I still have no idea who I am.

On January 1st, I will not eat differently.

On January 1st, I will not join a gym.

On January 1st, my scars will not erase themselves away.

On January 1st, I will have still done that.

Haruki Murakami wrote, “Most things are forgotten over time. Even the war itself, the life-and-death struggle people went through is now like something from the distant past. We’re so caught up in our everyday lives that events of the past are no longer in orbit around our minds. There are just too many things we have to think about everyday, too many new things we have to learn. But still, no matter how much time passes, no matter what takes place in the interim, there are some things we can never assign to oblivion, memories we can never rub away. They remain with us forever, like a touchstone.”

I learned that I don’t have to forget all of this, but I don’t have to carry it every day. I can live amidst war, even when it is inside me. I can search for peace amidst the screams and slashings.

Sometimes, just saying hello to a stranger can save a life or at least remind each other that we are visible even when we are not trying to be.

Burials and Boxes

What am I meant to leave behind? Bury into the soggy, spring ground and walk away from? This morning, while walking the pup, each leg felt like an office building with more windows than one could count, and cubicles and photo albums from every calendar, and at least 100 underpaid employees, and it may have been someone’s birthday because there was cake and an awkwardly harmonized Happy Birthday. 

All of this latched onto, into my thighs as I walked.

This weight I carry with me cannot be lost with a diet of grains, gluten- and sugar-free, and more water. I don’t need to join a gym right now. At least, not because of this office building built into my body.

I think I need a burial. For everything I carry with me that can be let go of, that can be left behind.

Last night, I dreamt that I lost my sandbag. I was walking and fell–while clutching my sandbag–into a thick, deep pit of mud. It pulled me in, but I got out. Unfortunately, my sandbag did not make it.

In real life, I sleep with a purple sandbag stuffed with flaxseeds and scented with the calming aroma of lavender. Others may call it an eye pillow. Sandbag prefers to be called Sandbag. There are nights I wake up and cannot find it. I travel my fingers beneath each pillow, search further down the bed. My sleeping spouse will sometimes (instinctively) find it for me.

Some have teddy bears. Some prefer light music to fall asleep to. Some like to sleep in silk undergarments. Or leather. Or….we all have our needs.

For me, Sandbag puts me to sleep. And though I do sometimes put it over my eyes, there are many nights, I fall asleep clutching it like a wish against my chest.

To analyze my dreams, I become each person, each important part. This helps me to understand it, unfold it. A therapist suggested this once, and it has offered me quite a bit of insight.

So, as I walked my dog and felt the wet air twist itself into my curls, I thought about my dream. I became my sandbag, losing itself in the dirt. Burying itself.

So, what am I ready to bury and move away from?

My current therapist–the best one–has told me that I may be ready to rewrite my story. I keep telling the same one.

But I know it so well. I’ve memorized only a few facts, but THIS story I can recite backwards.

When I was in my twenties, I had boxes. The first one started when I was nineteen, and I was with my first girlfriend. It became a casket of memories, even though we were still together then, as I stuffed receipts from outings, movie stubs, love notes, photos, even some gifts. When we broke up, I couldn’t get rid of the box. It was such a large piece of us, so I hid it beneath my bed, in closets as I moved and carried it with me past many state lines.

The next box was smaller and that one bled into another box which was bigger and then my next box overflowed and I had to graduate into a bigger one. I never told anyone of my boxes because it was a way of holding on, it became another secret I collected (I was so good at that). But then, my partner (at the time) learned of my collection and asked me to get rid of them. I was reluctant, but understood. We were moving in together and it wasn’t right to move in my past loves too.

So. I threw. Them. Away.

There are some things we simply cannot get rid of. I’ve got this army of scars on my arms and (elsewhere) that cannot be recycled or composted or buried beneath my bed. I guess there are creams and treatments, but mine are so embedded, and just like my glasses and the way that I hiccup only once sometimes, they are a part of me.

My sandbag is trying to tell me something. As it comforts me through the night, it whispers in its healthy flaxseed-soaked voice: How about you stop living behind you, and living ahead, and start walking within your current?

I do not like to leave my house. The subway has become a traveling circus of panic attacks. Lately, I have been daydreaming of mountains and closet space. I just don’t know how to be present.

Perhaps this is all to say that maybe a contemplated burial is enough right now. A realization that yes, it is time to let go because by doing so, I can make room for more. More memories that have been waiting on line for years to get into the packed club that is me.

What I was and what I am have been battling my whole life. I am ready to examine what I could be.

 

on the road part 2

“Discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” – Marcel Proust

Here, the trees are from literature, the kind which hide wild inside its bark. Living within the grass stems and rock formations: lizards and skinny squirrels.

On an early morning romp with the pup, I exhale city from my lungs. My brain forks into memories of past lives. Who was I best? How do I access that corner closet behind my kidneys that houses my widest smile?

Sometimes I fear I am most alone when I am loved.

My pup chases a family of ducks and I think about what part of my body feels most familiar. I contemplate a body not always in panic mode. I channel Proust, grow fingernail long enough to scoop out my left eye (my right one wouldn’t budge), and replace it with milkwood. I blink blink blink and attempt a resurrection.

Is it possible to rewrite how we see things. Here, in the south, Sea Grapes and Cabbage Palms. Maybe I can  unfurl the roots in me that just stopped growing.

Maybe I just need to keep digging.

Rainbow of Crows

for Jules and Rebecca and Jessica (summoners of wisdom)

 

None of this was here before, yet I can’t remember what you looked like without. All the hair on your arms got burnt somehow by July or nocturnal angels. You can call that scar a footnote to the rest of you. It doesn’t have to be tragic or metaphorical. Like that time you swam over disconnected limbs and tried to imagine the shape they used to belong to.

None of this is because of you.

One of the hardest parts about leaving is the moon is never available for a one-on-one and when you try to dial its number, all you get are the sounds of birds’ wings crashing.

Like an applause. Like the milky rust of a stubborn teardrop. Like a heat rash on the part of your body billboards tell you to flatten. Like the horizon on a fingernail. Like what happens when you emerge from a corn maze and at the end, a rainbow of crows.

The Sum of Calendars

I am trying to let go of something

–Tracy K. Smith

 

It feels like cold sore body gristle cracked molar memory of sixteen to nineteen

Misshapen elastic mourning its taut, its firm, its locked box casing

It feels like that time you learned Lucille Ball died while on the way to family Thanksgiving or Grandma’s grave or synagogue or some other place that triggered loneliness

You awake from a dream where all your teeth have been replaced with slurs. You try to sound out help or hungry or not now but all that comes out are four letter words bleeped out on the radio

Remember when your body was new. A gift-wrapped holiday. Upright and without all its springs popped. Yesterday, your veins started scratching their way out of each thigh. Morse code of aging. You want to call them beautiful; all that comes out is malnourished spider legs.

You are trying to let go of something. Of every organ which has grown slightly off-kilter. Of your misshapen brain, congealed due to improper adolescence. Of every time your welcome mat was set on fire.

One day, you will go on a bike ride. Your ears will be unplugged, just waiting to surf over wind and traffic. You will notice that your muscles can take you away but also bring you back home. You will lose your breath but something inside you will locate more. You will cry because every time your body moves, it remembers. It remembers. You may howl because sometimes you feel like a cone snail or a saltwater crocodile but you just can’t seem to commit to danger, so you keep pedaling. With every block, you let go. Back there, fingerprints from that time. Three pounds of hair, a partially lobotomized fingernail, some skin ready to flee, spit, all gone. You are something else; you are everything you were; you are nothing from before; you are all of it; the sum of calendars. You are still here. As you check your imaginary rearview window, you can see its blur miles behind you. You really wanted to let go. You were really hoping it wouldn’t follow. So you keep pedaling; you keep panting; you keep pushing your way out of __________ .

on relocating

What is it to move? We need no suitcases nor giant truck full of our belongings to engage in this verb.

To move is to extend body into another place.

To move is to take up space.

To move is to spread language like slow-churned butter onto walls and over potholes and between bricks on buildings.

To move is to understand where you began and where you have lead yourself.

Recently, I have relocated. Not to a faraway land, but a different part of a familiar borough. With ceilings far longer than arms’ reach and backyard and sun drenched walls. With built-in bookcases by fairy-tale landlord. With smells of poetry and granola wafting within each room.

As I packed in preparation for this new space, I found myself touching everything I own and asking why it still exists. In the land of New York where closets are deemed as “an extra bedroom” and square footage is comparable to some people’s weights, it can be difficult to hold onto things. So, I created piles: to keep, to give away, to leave behind.

I come from a long lineage of “hoarders”. But please do not be mistaken. We are of a people not fit for television reality show; instead, we hoard memories. And the dust that gathers on recollections can be fierce and overpowering.

Just yesterday, my too-good-to-be-true-but-he-is landlord spoke this advice: Sometimes it’s important to just let go of things. Ask yourself if you are ‘in need of it’ or if ‘it defines you’. And what that even means. In the end, sometimes it’s best to just photograph the ‘memory’. Because even if you throw ‘it’ away, the memory still exists. No garbage can can take that away.

odour.

There is a stench of earl grey, fruit so sour that mouths turn inside out and resemble wheelbarrows curved inward. It is difficult to let go. To walk past the path that you memorized like your name or favorite flavor of ice cream. None of this may look familiar. None of this smells like sadness, instead citrus. Its bitter begs you to carry more in. When was the last time you smiled without wire and obstruction of caution tape. Saying goodbye allows space for welcome signs, so thick and loud that this banner comes with its own sound system. Your body is bleeding out gusts of wind, washing away every ounce of loitered memory. Breathe in trunks so high, you mistake them for skyscrapers. Enter. Climb up the staircase of approachable petals. Drink in the pollen of another. Linger the flavor before swallowing this moment. Call it lemon. Call it starch or necessity of diet. Call it pen pal. Call it sprite or flash of collision. Call it love found inside a photo booth on a friday. Call it red or dripped of pigment. Call it pronoun of gender neutrality. Call it a feeling.

cleanse.

Breathe. For twenty-one days, you proved to your body you could go without. You gave up ritual of caffeinated steamed lover pressed into french kiss glass with almond or oat milk stirred flesh. Throat mourned for days into weeks, yearning for that feeling of burnt tongue because some things are too hot for patience.

For twenty-one days, you went without fermented drunk. Poem’d in bars with breath of seltzer and lime. Did shots of question marks and annotations, flirting with humans housing whiskey within the curves of their cavities. You realized booze is not always necessary to loosen your limbs and fall in lust.

For twenty-one days, you dug fork into enough chick peas to refer to skin tone as legume’d. There was no cheese or bread or animals. Turned the inside of your body into an ocean of Brooklyn water.

For twenty-one days, you reflected. Forgave.  Told the ghosts to gather elsewhere. Let in new ones. Let go of patterns of fear. Forgave your secrets and spoke them out loud. Threw away runners; recognized the beauty in remaining with an/other. Found new entrances to your body. Changed the locks and swept up the parade of winter outside your bones to prepare for the roots of spring to expand.

threshold exhumed

“The hunger is something you dig a hole in yourself to bury.”          Kazim Ali

All of this was ripped. Part of something else.

There are words, which used to be part of other things and now reside as this.

There is a pelvic blueprint, reminding me that even an x-ray can lie.

There is a swarm of vegetables shaped into a heart, symbolizing healthy love.

There is a body that can not be called male or female, rather satisfied and comfortable.

There is earth.

There is an Italian cookie. A newspaper. Modern Love.

There are trees and water. There is sun. There is a city bridge. There is a fortune. There is hope.

This is my vision board. This blue square of paper is a guide of desires, goals, dreams.

When I think about what I hope to manifest, I feel overwhelm. For so many years, I have buried my hungers so deep behind bones, caging them in.

Who/what am I waiting for.

I cannot stop with just this paper. It is a visual, but the rest must come from me.

I hold my left palm in such a way that it sinks, fingers lift up as though being pulled by invisible string. My palm is a cup I can sip out of. It is a bowl I can eat from. I can subsist on whatever fits inside my flesh. Parts of my skin, dry, pulls. There is a web of creases.

I am growing stronger on the outside, but if I were to photograph my innards, what musculature would gather?

My vision blurs, shifts, squints, takes in.

What do others notice that I do not; what do I notice that others can’t.

I want to see myself in this paper. Hybrid body. Floatation device. Loved. Traveler. A climb toward.

Do we ever reach that moment where reflection matches what we want or think we see.

Tell me how to get there.

the end is just the beginning of admittance.

There were several last times. But the last last time was almost eight years ago.

I still struggle with what to call myself. Sometimes I will tell someone I am a former addict, but that doesn’t seem quite true. Former alludes to past and although it isn’t an active part of my present, my addiction resides in me at all times.

It has complicated relationships with lovers and kept me at a distance with friends. Although I no longer seek out drugs in the ways in which I used to, I never want to be in the same room as them.

My drug came in tiny bags and bottles, but my drug also existed inside me. Addictions often arrive in multiples. Though I consumed in front of others, I preferred being alone. It was my secret. I never wanted anyone to know how much or how often or the amount I was spending or what I was doing to get it. It was never cool or something I felt the need to confess to others. I always felt shame.

As I approach the anniversary of my birth, I look back on years of blurred breathing. I tried various modes of treatment, but what continues to work is arriving at each day approaching every hour one tick at a time.

As I write these words, I find myself watching letters lunge onto the screen and then disappear. I think: That is too much. You shouldn’t write that. Or no one needs to know all this about me.

We are living in a time when people post pictures of every meal they eat and document each moment of their day. We are no longer keeping things in. I struggle with giving too much away. I’ve kept a lot of secrets. I’ve lost lovers and friends because of this addiction as well. I don’t really feel the need to tell you about my intake of food or share a picture of myself on the subway in a bar in a dance club on the street in a bathroom.

What leads me to unzip, unfold and release some of this is because I know I am just one of many. Each time I ask someone to hold out their hands and I let something private slip out of my mouth, I feel closer to forgiveness of my self. All around us, people are dying due to various addictions and secrets that cause the ones who survive to ask questions: What could I have done? Should I have reacted sooner?

If I can save one person from starting, I’ll turn out my pockets and give them all the memories I stuff in there. I’m trying not to hide anymore. It is an extremely difficult procedure. To give away. To reveal. I can take off my clothes far easier than letting you know the traditions and lineage of my scars.

So there is no end to this, but some things have changed. I no longer seduce medicine cabinets like women, batting my eyes at milligram content and side effects. I (do my best to) stay far away from pills and prescriptions. I say no a lot more to remind myself that I can. I remind myself of the time I’ve accrued, but do not obsess over this. Addicts regress, but this doesn’t take away the strength of sobriety. This is why one day at a time is stitched into pillows and posters and bodies and meditative mantras. One can never say never again. It is an unfair summation. It just isn’t that easy.

So we mention today. Which will guide us toward tomorrow. And the day after that. And beyond.