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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

when will I tell them

I’m leaving it all behind

traded it in for the

mountains and red dirt

beneath my feet

when will I tell them

their proximity is

collateral damage?

how will I convince them

I still carry them

with me

that I will return

sometimes, if only

to see their faces?

how can I say it

to woo them into

believing I know

my soul needs the

pines and the desert and

the wild space of

it all

how do I explain to them

that home isn’t here

without tearing a hole

in their chests?

I want them

to be happy for me

I want them to say

we understand and

we trust you

to choose right for yourself

even if that is rocks

and sky and bruised knees and

dusty nebulas.

I want them to say

go find your home

then come back and tell us

all about it.

That’s how I hope it goes.

But if it doesn’t

if they shake their heads

and say

how could you

this is a mistake

I will cry

but I will fly anyway.

5/11

older, but not quite

wiser, perhaps

fuller?

more deeply rounded in

all directions

ironic as time seems

to only flow in

one direction–

but we both know

it doesn’t.

I often feel

stuck in place but I

think I’m giving

myself excuses

as to why I haven’t

broken free

a wild horse convinced

a twine halter

is too strong to be

snapped

somehow holding back

all that power and

muscle–what it means

to be free.

5/11

I wonder when it started

the need to feel strong.

I wonder when the way

I feel pulling myself up

walls and running through

the woods became equated

with holding everything in

not letting the pain show.

I wonder when weakness

became my body size and

whether or not I’d had

a panic attack that day

the pace of my breaths

the pudge of my stomach

how memories came

haunting, knocking at my door.

I wonder when I started

counting, adding up people’s

perceptions to find out where

I measured on the success

scale, or at least

the acceptable one.

I wonder when I stopped

being the girl who watched

the eagle fly and the

horses run and lost her breath

at the first sight

of the mountains

who loved the fact the world

entered her every pore

and there was nothing

she could do to stop it

who measured a good

day, a good life, by how

open and true she felt

to who she really was

a girl who embraced–

I wonder when she left.

4/21

a lot is changing

but I still feel

stuck

stuck in lines I

walk

phrases I say

the need to

wait

wait

wait

when I want

to run

sprint to the

mountains and the

road and the

nowhere until I’m

so in the middle of it

I can’t even

imagine

where I came from

can’t see another soul

to tell me this isn’t

what I want

or what I should want.

I want to find

where I fit

to go home and have

home go with me–

and yet also

there are things

we need

and I don’t know if I’m

just too timid

or doing the right thing.

I hear

the latter but from those

whose feet have

forgotten how to

leap.

In the dark I learned

how to be still

still to survive

still to conserve the energy

for breath

to make myself

small

and still smaller–

but now I want to shuck

the dark off, slough

it away like snakeskin

and just be LOUD

and for once hope, believe

see it dawn true and pink

before my eyes–

what if it all works out?

I wonder what you’ll think of it.

Or if you’ll even read it.

When I wrote my story I didn’t

expect it to be read by thousands

didn’t expect it to end up in

bookstores and in the hands of

people who may know me.

I’m sorry.

I wrote it a long

time ago, and in other ways

only days ago–but these things

take time.

Of course it’s fiction.

It also isn’t.

Both truths equally true as

anyone who knows me

or you

will know.

But at the same time, no one

will fully grasp the truth of it

no one but you and I

and perhaps not even that.

I wanted to use a pseudonym.

Wanted to hide behind the

truth of me like it was

something to be ashamed of

when in reality I was just

afraid

that everyone wouldn’t understand

as they often tend to do.

But here’s the truth.

When someone picks up my book.

They won’t see me.

They won’t see you.

They’ll see the swirling magic of

story as it hits something, an echo

resonating deep inside–

they’ll see themselves

their own fierce loves and desperate

losses.

They won’t be alone

as I was.

And as you and I fade into their

background

just know–

I wrote it for myself.

But I’ll always remember you.