It's funny how you can think
everything
is OK,
but really, it isn't.
Funny-peculiar,
not funny-hilarious.
I am not OK.
And neither is this.
And I hate admitting that.
I thought this would help,
but clearly
was mistaken
in my hopeful state.
I am on the verge of losing my mind.
What do you do with that?
I have no fucking idea.
I don't know anything
anymore.
Everything I thought I knew
vanished
into this
stale air,
right along with my future.
When you have an unending arsenal
of
symptoms
for which there seems to be
no cause or cure,
you can slip
into some certain
madness
trying to figure it all out.
That's where I am,
on a steady
slipping
motion
into that place where you forget
everything that mattered to you,
because you no longer know
what anything
means to you.
All you know is this aching
and these symptoms
that make no sense.
I've thought about ending
this life,
and always go over in my head
the writing I would have to
destroy,
the things I would want
to toss into the garbage
at least
two weeks prior.
But what the hell
would any of that stuff
matter
once I was gone?
So you'd know I had
a couple of vibrators,
and that I harboured
some resentment for
you
for one or two
reasons.
Big deal.
So you'd discover that I was
tortured
more than you knew.
Think what you want to think about me.
You will anyway.
I can see everything I lost
and
everything I wanted.
All of it is gone.
These things are meant
for someone who feels
good
inside her body.
These things are meant
for someone else,
period.
I don't know how to stop
believing that.
As I fall apart,
as these last bits
of twine and leather
unravel,
I focus only
on what hurts the most,
which
sadly,
has become everything.
It is easy to get a feel for the
grievous damage
done to a life by an unforgiving body.
To do this, you need only
listen to the story
falling from the lips
and seeping
from the pores of a person
who avows
that they have lost everything.
And in their eyes,
they have.
In my eyes,
I have.
But there are moments,
sweet,
blissful fragments
of time,
where I feel all of it
around me,
all these missing parts.
Not so out of
reach.
Everything familiar.
Like the sound of crickets,
or the tea in my cup.
And it lingers
for as long as it will.
When it goes,
I am left with words and thoughts
dipped in dark blue ink.
Long bouts of exquisite tenderness;
I fear this has made me weird.
This and all other
injurious things,
lasting like scars.
My mind wraps around
the self-doubt
that has come to fit me
like a glove,
made by someone crafty
just for
me.
I live inside,
looking out at the world going by
seemingly without me.
But I am here,
still longing,
still hoping,
still giving it a good try.
I have my map
and my knapsack
and my three-dollar compass.
I have my nerve
and my intellect
and my
genuine smile.
I have the fact
that I can breathe
underwater,
because that's what I am left with,
here in this place
where little makes sense.
If I could collect
what I wanted,
I would use a butterfly net.
All of the nets of this nature
should be retired
from their original duty,
and instead, rehired as tools
for catching lost hopes,
misplaced dreams,
and missing
outcomes.
Because, without a doubt,
everyone knows the cruelty involved
in capturing someone
who once
was
free.
Linda
