Author: Ash

It’s 10:45 PM. I’m standing on tiny patio behind my apartment, letting my dog out to pee. It’s warm. Too warm for May, but a relief from the earlier heat. It’s quiet. Sometimes I forget that the highway runs right by our house on nights I can barely hear it. I stand here, on the thin green carpet, next to a child’s unicorn-patterned folding chair and a pair of assless leather chaps left out to dry (don’t ask–my roommate is kind of a punk star).

At night, when I’m lonely, sometimes I wonder what I’m doing. What even is my life right now? I go to bed alone. I wake up alone. I miss you. Goddamn it, I miss you. I know this wasn’t my choice, not really, but I still can’t find it in me to get properly fucking angry about it.

I guess when you still love someone so much, the sad wins out.

But yeah, back to now. To the too warm night, and the jingle of Phoenix’s collar. We pass the baby gate (she still goes after the cat, no matter how many times I tell her off for it), and I give her an extra large scoop of dinner with beef sprinkles. No wonder she weighed extra at the vet. But she deserves it, even though she went ballistic at a small child through the window today. But we don’t count that. She’s so warm and soft when I go in for a kiss. Right behind her ear is still my favorite spot.

I open the fridge, dump a tablespoon of sugar in a bowl, load it up the rest of the way with strawberries. (I will quickly find that it’s hard to reach the sugar when you bury it with strawberries.) Yeah, sometimes I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing with my life. But I can afford strawberries. I remember when I couldn’t afford strawberries. I had three pork chops for dinner (apparently I don’t eat enough protein), and sure, I did think about how much each one cost. But that’s more about the state of the economy than anything else.

But hey, I can eat strawberries. And yeah, I’m broke as fuck because of that expensive medication–but I choose to be on that, for a shot at feeling better in my body. I get to do that, take chances on myself. How many people get to do that? It’s probably not a life you’d be happy with, but it’s enough for me.

Yeah, I still dream about you. Dreams so sticky, they follow me around for days and get caught in my throat a week later when I’m trying to talk about them in therapy. Sometimes they never come out. But you know what else? I’m singing again. I wrote a song for the first time in years. It was a sad one, but still. I wrote it. And I sang it in front of people. And I didn’t hate it, and they didn’t either.

A few days ago was the anniversary of the day I lost you. (And I know that makes it sound like you died. You didn’t. But also, you did.) I still can’t think about that day. I can touch on it for two seconds in my mind, like a bird hovering over a branch–tap, tap–but if I try to settle, I’ll lose myself. So I don’t. I don’t think about it, I don’t talk about it. Sometimes that’s the best a person can do, just keep going, with their head down. Sometimes I feel like I’m just walking around that moment in circles, without realizing.

I spent that day at the lake. Eighty-four feet up in the air on a ledge, EDM music pumping through speakers. Too loud for me, but I didn’t complain. How could I, when I got to roll down that highline, suspended by a piece of webbing over the water, and flip upside down. Soles to the sky, hands free for half a moment. All open space and blue and me, small in the middle of it. (They had to fish me back out of the sky, ’cause apparently hauling yourself up an incline hand over hand is harder than it looks–I still have the bruises and my abs are sore as hell. But it was worth it.)

Afterward, I hiked down the route I used to take as a kid, made easier with new trails. The old ladder by the waterfall is still there, but now I take the stairs. It still felt like stepping into Jurassic Park, no matter how I got there (I finally saw that movie, by the way. There’s a whole story there. I doubt you’d want to hear it. But the movie lives up to the hype.) The ferns, and the creek, and the stone rising up all around you.

The water was just a bit too cold, still not caught up to the hot air, but I got in anyway. It took a lot to psych myself up for the full dunk, but I did it. First swim of the summer. Hung out on the paddleboard and cheered on my friends making beautiful shapes with their bodies on the aerial silks. Climbed out of the water, fingers pulling on those iron banded flakes, toes gripping at footholds. Watched the climbers pulling hard through the Coliseum cave roof. Took pictures of the guy doing gainers off the jumping rock, the big splash he made. (Yeah, I’m taking pictures again. Remember how you got me into that?)

I didn’t tell anyone what day it was. Surrounded by people, most friends, but didn’t say a thing. It’s hard to talk about my emotions now. I’m actually pretty shit at it. It feels like trying to relearn to swim as a human, all bumbling and flipperless, when in a past life I was a fish. I bet you don’t believe it–you never could get me to shut up about my feelings. But you took that ability with you. Turns out, getting it back is hard won. I’m still convincing myself it’s worth the fight.

But yeah. I’m here. I buy strawberries. I flip upside down on highlines. I swim and try acro yoga and get tangled up in silks and go to barn parties and take Phoenix to the river. I’m living a whole goddamn life here. And for the most part, I love it. But I keep moving for a reason. Because when I stand too still–there you are.

The problem with ghosts is you actually have to want them to stop haunting you.

Fuck, I didn’t want to cry tonight. I never want to cry at all. But sometimes, I’m trying so hard not to cry, that I forget to live. And I don’t want to do that anymore. I guess like anything, it takes practice. I’ll get better at it.

I ate my strawberries. They were sweet. The leftover sugar pools in a crescent moon at the bottom of my bowl, along with two leafy tops. Phoenix is curled into the pile of pillows on my floor. My room is cool enough with the fan humming. It’s time to sleep, so I can wake up again.

Goodnight.

freedom was my

marriage bed.

even as a child

love rang in the calls

of wild horses

not in the slow march

of aisle bells.

that was the promise

you’d never cage me.

you knew what

I was

a creature untamed.

for me, love and freedom’s

name have always been

one and the same

a clear, sustained note

on an early spring morning.

love was expected to be

a playful chase

on new dewed grass

a back and forth

touch and run

giggle

grapple

tumble

a tangle of arms and

legs and breath and

mouths.

never did I expect

to be chasing you.

never did I expect

you’d be so hard to

catch.

when did you stop

running after me?

what was the

moment

I turned around

to find you far behind?

---

if only I could remember

maybe my tired dusty feet

could retrace

grope for your hand

in the dark

and hold on.

what do you do

when love becomes

your ceiling

a book that refuses

to close

the force of keeping

your knees open

warping your bones?

I know I love you.

I know

I am a burden to you.

I am the snow ever

falling, a white blanket

that just keeps coming

suffocating all your dreams.

who is crazy here,

you

or I?

you to think

I could be content

as the creature of your imagination,

me to think

you could ever adore

this

naked vulnerability?

---

maybe we

are

equal fools.

---

yet, who

I’ve always been–

a fool for

impossible love.

I am a love letter

to my own body

bloody seal cracked

open

too many words spilling

out.

I am a love poem

weighed down by

grief like ice on

bare winter branches.

I am an ode to the kind

of longing that’s too

sweet

the sugar powder stick

that hurts your teeth

with almost sour

perfection.

how am I supposed

to love myself

and love you?

I don’t know

I don’t know

I don’t know.

---

I am all the lasts and

firsts and the

crackle of snow’s

broken crust.

I feel like a stranger

in my own body

numb

hollowed out, like

a nut’s shell cracked open

no meat inside.

the forest is dark and deep

and my heart wanders

leaking

over the pine needles.

every time I think

the sun is rising

she slips back to her bed

and I weather the cold

well or ungracefully

I don’t know.

just–out of touch

longing for more

and fearing it’s arrival.

I guess I’ll just

stay

here

for now.

I’m learning what it is

to be helpless

to only have control over

my own mind – no, actually that

grip is too tentative, sometimes

not even that.

I’m learning what it is to be

help-able.

to not have the strength to

find food in the kitchen or

even walk across the room

to be unable to mumble out words

to form a vague shape of

the cloud in my head.

it is hard not to feel ashamed, not to feel

like a trembling child, when my husband

leads me to the bathroom by the hand

strips me down, gently draws me a bath

and helps lower my traitorous body

feeds me cheese and crackers

by hand as my strength too slowly

slips back. it is hard not to feel ashamed

when my apartment is so dirty that I

can’t work or think or eat or breathe

that my mother has to come over to clean

because I don’t have the capacity

to do it myself. it is hard not to feel

ashamed when our ceiling is falling in

and all I can do is beat my fists against

the floor, knowing I can’t move us

since packing two boxes makes me dizzy

for the rest of the day.

it is hard not to feel ashamed

when my friends come from every

direction, New York, North Carolina, to pack me

and move me, and unpack me again

since the very air I’m breathing is sapping

the health from my body.

it is hard not to feel ashamed, to need

help so desperately, to know that I would be

absolutely f****d without it. that probably

I would survive. but I absolutely would not

be truly living. it’s hard

not to feel ashamed.

but slowly, gradually

ever so softly, there’s another feeling creeping

over my skin, one so foreign that I don’t

know what to do with it, don’t have a mental

cubbyhole for it to live in

so I’m having to build one

from scratch. it’s overwhelming, but not

in a bad way. overwhelming like the bright

of the sun on a summer day, shocking yet

warm on your skin. it feels like–like–

like I could almost maybe

be worth it for someone

to help, to love

when I can’t give anything back

when I’m so helpless

I’m finally help-able

even when I can’t bring myself

to say anything other than

“why?”

it’s a weird thing, being sick for so long.

the kind of sick that doesn’t

go away, only wanes and surges.

a dear friend told me recently

no one teaches us how to be sick this long

and he was right

we feel old before our time, so very

very old, and the world feels scary

and unpredictable as a fickle

conscienceless breeze.

I don’t know how to describe it, this

invisible thing that lives in my bones and

lungs and blood. some days it is

a sleeping dragon, the only sign

of its presence the occasional

wisps of smoke. other days it is

roaring, charring my insides, deadening

my skin, shallowing my breath, yet

no one can see. they only see

a quiet girl, a girl who stays in her house

for too many days in a row, a girl who spends

more time in bed than outside it.

it’s a weird thing, being sick for so long.

weird because no one understands it

least of all me, who has

to live with it. it’s a weird kind of grace

to extend to yourself, when you feel

that every time you prod your body too

firmly, another piece flakes away, crumbling

to dust. it’s not supposed

to be this way. that, at least

I’ve known for years. but for the first time

as I peel back the layers of my onion

heart, one excruciating film at a time

I think I’m finally starting

to understand why.

It’s hard to explain it, how

five years ago is behind me and yet

still laps over the present, a shimmering black

wave, receding and washing forward again

up on the silver sands of my mind.

It’s hard to explain how then morphs

into now, how

the band on my finger tells me

my lover is never leaving and yet when I wake

in the early hours of the morning and

the bed beside me is empty, only

rumpled blankets and sleeping dog

my heart races backward to the 1000 plus nights

when I waited for him

to call, to text, to meet me in the field

under the moon or to simply walk by

and I was left in the dark, afraid.

Despite the pictures on the walls, your smile

moving in my phone I’m afraid

I made it all up. Made it all up and

no one is ever coming back for me.

Somehow, curled into my pillow

that feels more true.

The wave laps higher up the beach

and it’s hard to explain why the depression

has returned, why the anxiety still

squeezes my throat when it’s not all about

him anymore–at least, not exactly.

Not exactly about him but it is exactly about

all those 1000 plus nights waiting for something

that would never come, waiting

for my love to come back to me like a cosmic

boomerang because of course it would,

wouldn’t it?

I don’t know how to explain it, don’t know

what he’d say if he knew–

that just like the love never fully left me

the dark that crept into my veins in his absence

didn’t either. Don’t know

if I’d have the strength to tell him

that my body learned to attack itself

targeting my thyroid, my adrenals, my mind

forgot how to do everything but wait

wait, even though you told me not to

but love was a stronger siren.

My body took an imprint of those 1000 plus

nights, sunrises, sunsets–a marking

too permanent for medicine, a diagnosis

I’ll probably live with forever.

I don’t know how to explain it, how now

when new, sweet love has soothed so many wounds

like honey, like eucalyptus–how is it possible

that the dark ocean still laps, sometimes low until I

almost forget about it, then sometimes high,

high, too high up on my beach?

I cannot tell all the reasons. Only that love

carves the deepest scar. Only that

I still wouldn’t take any of it

back.

asking for what you want

is not a simple matter.

some people just

open their mouths

and the need emerges like a

fully formed ribbon

satiny and red

or purple and crinkly like

carefully crumpled paper.

for some people, articulating

is as simple as

making noise.

but I’m not used to it–

explaining to myself

is much easier than

convincing others.

is what I want the problem

or is it everyone else, or perhaps

I just expect them to read my mind?

that’s not fair.

but neither is this.

I wish I could write each

request down on a soft yellow

slip of paper

and receive responses just as sunny–

‘oh yes,’ they’d say, nodding

‘we can do that.’

and so we would.

when I think about you

I think of thunderstorms

and the smell of pourover coffee.

I think of marbles rattling

into a plastic jar, I think of

freshly vacuumed carpet.

I think of floppy wolf cubs and

round scrambled eggs and

handwriting scrawled on

paper. I think of clean

cotton on skin and the lap

of river water kissing

my toes. I think of the

bursting green of summer

of the taste of hot chili-

cheese fries and crispy cold

lemonade. When I think about

you, I think of cocoons and

the call of chickadees

the splash of stone into water

the sun on bared t-shirt arms

roots that somehow

reach

and cradle

at the same time

holding me.

5/11