ex _________

some lonelinesses are so total and singular they have no opposite. there is no adequate comfort one can reach out for. no voice in the dark. no cool hand laid gently across the forehead.
one simply grows accustomed to the wound.
the wound remains.

down deep in the well

it's hard sometimes... figuring out what needs to be said and what doesn't... and which of those necessary words need be offered up to the outside world. it can be so confusing and daunting. 

i return, again and again, to the memory of watching my mother burn her day's writing in a coffee can on the back porch.  perhaps she was performing a ritual of release, not enacting a vow of silence... perhaps she was letting go, not erasing herself... but that was not the impression i got at the time. 

my mother burned her written thoughts as a way to ensure her own safety from shame, humiliation, and wrath. her words had been twisted by others too many times. she had been made to feel wholly ashamed of her inner, truer self for too many years. so she set the expression of that self on fire in a can. the ashes of her words was a type of insurance. this immolation was an act of self-preservation, protection, and security. i understand it, mama, but i sure wish i had something of yours to read these days. i wish i could see your handwriting, smell a sheet of paper your thin hands once smoothed the wrinkles from... i wish i had anything at all that still carried your vanilla, your musk, your sandlewood, your smell.

scents float off and are subsumed by others but words remain. i wish i had a few more of hers. i wish i could have access to some of what she thought about, some of what she wrestled with. i wish i could see her fighting for answers, fighting through her own fears and insecurities. i wish i could see her inside her own, full humanity rather than the singular and limiting image i have of her as my mother. the question mark she has become grows taller the longer i go down the road of my life without her. by writing my own story i at least have a shot at seeing myself inside the fullness of my own humanity... and maybe that catharsis of writing through my experiences, all of the loss and shame and humiliation and hopelessness, all of the joy and ecstacy and fulfillment and hope, the crazy swirl of opposites that make up a life... if i can tell the truth regardless of my fears, despite my shaky voice, maybe i will be able to see her, even if only fleetingly, as a woman and as a human being, not merely as my mother. 

she must be allowed to keep her shortcomings. she is entitled to her flaws. she must be allowed to retain her humanity this way. she was not a perfect being and nor am i. allowing for imperfection seems a mandate of real love. i don't want to make an angel of her. i want to know that she struggled and that she did the best she could. i want to know she was sometimes resentful of having to be the bigger person and maybe delighted every now and then in choosing not to be. i want to know she sometimes indulged mean-spirited thoughts. i want to know she was afraid sometimes but stood up and faced those monsters anyway and i want to know how she did it. i want to know that she stumbled but found a way to pick herself back up. wasn't she the one who said, "You gotta put blue-jeans on your dreams." wasn't she the one who urged me in the weeks leading up to her death, "Soak up all the joy you can out of this experience, little girl."

and it seems to me that writing through the hard stuff must be part of it. running from it has done no good. drowning it has proven to be impossible. i am nearing the end of my personal challenge to go 100 days without alcohol and all the pain i thought i was obliterating is still here, still throbbing as hard and as fresh as ever. but i can look at it now and not fall apart. i can carry it. i can heft the weight of my own tears.

and...

and yet...

and so...

i go to the page, every day, and i write for hours. i don't know what will make it out from under the safety of my trembling hands but i know that i am tired of feeling so afraid of how much trouble i will get in for telling the truth. after all, i am no longer a little girl.

one thing i learned from my mother is that telling the truth need not be malicious. in fact, brutal honesty is not something i have ever believed in. intent to harm is nothing to esteem, no matter the cause. not every thought needs a breath behind it. i am allowed the dignity of privacy, just like everyone else...

and...

and yet...

and so... 

i simply go on writing for now. i haven't had the experience of writing as a method of inquiry and discovery in such an intense way in quite a long time. i am watching myself figure out my own opinions. i am watching myself figure out what my own emotions signal and belie. i feel more and more like my true self. a steadier sense of self-worth grows in place of the insecurities that choked out my ability to be who i really am. 

my stories belong to me.

behind the scenes, i am learning how to write them. 

happy

two poems of mine have been published in the inaugural issue of Recenter Press and i feel such a deep, quiet, radiant sort of happiness... the need to just sit and stare out the front window, smiling at everything and nothing in particular.

something about it confirms the fact that putting words out into the world is an act of healing. or can be. writing is such an amazing thing. and so, it follows that healing, like writing, is courageous; an act of honest bravery. 

the entire issue is a total gem. i am a very lucky girl. 

happy poetry month ❤️❤️

instructions for opening the heart:

shut your mouth and stop looking at me like that.

get lucky

red robin

a sudden voice in my head i'm sorry i haven't been there for you... and i can't tell if the voice is my own or the voice of a friend in a different state or if, finally, my mother might be apologizing from below her lost well of ashes.

despite my longing, i realize that, of these three, mine is the only voice with any real weight behind it, any muscle available to do the heavy lifting. it is my blood salting the guttural click.  a sucker for platitudes, yes, but the anvil of accountability is yoked solely to my own throat. beg and row, the answer remains the same. the necessity to dust off my skinned knees is a reality. i spit on my fingers and rub the saliva into the wounds i've received.

then, starting off again, maybe on roller-skates this time, down a path drawing me nearer to lessons unsuspected and unforeseen - a robin in a tree - the wind lacing itself in quick figure eights around my raw, wet knees. it feels amazing.

so far (and without any concern for chronology)

3 1/2 weeks in to the new year, i have:

finished three drawings and started a fourth

read a thin book of poetry

began teaching myself a Lana Del Rey song on guitar

had my first solo art show in New York City in an apartment in Ridgewood

ate cheese cake and drank coffee with the friends who came

visited my friend in the hospital

brought her tomato bisque

brought her lentil soup

cut her hair for her when we realized the chemo had taken harsh hold of her, her golden strands coming out in clumps unexpectedly early

cried with her

held her hand

fell off the wagon

got my period a week early

bloodied our new white sheets

cried in public because i was drunk and angry

i was drunk and angry because i was hurt

got back on the wagon

wrote my husband a thank you note

cried in front of two different friends, separately, for the first time

have extended no less than 5 apologies, all of which were most certainly deserved

sent my Grandmother 2 postcards

listened to "Loveless" by My Bloody Valentine for the very first time.

asked my husband to marry me even though we are already married

watched "Bob's Burgers" for the very first time

went to work

went to therapy

sang