I hate all titles today, so this poem doesn’t get one.
Week fourteen. Tomorrow, hopefully: week fifteen.
Early warnings:
The horses shake their heads
like they're trying to
shake the devil off.
The air feels metallic,
heavy, wet.
And I, sensitive to
everything,
get a sensation on my right
shoulder blade almost like a
rubber band, gently snapping.
Green sky pressing down, down
until at once – it lifts.
There's a breath of cool air.
The deluge comes in a wave.
Sometimes you can see it moving
toward you, inexorable —
a baptism, or a blessing.
Next comes the curse, electric.
(I never found it punishing,
instead, a mikveh.
Let it strike and strike again,
I will celebrate,
dancing in invitation.)
The world shakes, gently,
gently, letting the ache of the day
out of its muscles.
Long and low,
slow like a stretch.
The count shrinks then
grows, passing
over, and I,
sensitive to everything,
am left.
A three inch long diagonal line just below the right side of my right knee, acquired by ramming the edge of a metal cart into my leg during strike in August of 2016.
A tiny jagged line on the left side of my right wrist – I have no recollection of the precipitating injury nor sense of the year in which I got it, but it's at least 15 years old.
Moving from a small town in Alaska to the capital of Wisconsin at the age of eight, creating a tiny weird outcast whose previous life was viewed as the punchline to a joke.
Reading Bridge to Terabithia in the third grade and for the first time understanding irrevocable loss.
A couple of acne scars because being a teenager is a cruel farce.
Leaving camp, one of my dearest homes, after fourteen years because of my first brush with someone who believed they have the right to be the sole arbiter on who exactly can contribute to a team and who should be treated as worthless.
Walking away without a backward glance and spending six years pretending an open wound was fully healed before a very good therapist dug in and refused to let me dodge the subject.
Not being able to listen to Lean On Me for every single one of those six years.
Dime-sized scars on my left kneecap, very faint, left over from learning to ride a bike on a gravel road at the age of six.
The fight my mother and I had when I was 14 that ended with her yelling, "You and all of your friends are whores!"
A small rectangle right in the middle of the back of my right hand obtained by not being careful enough while taking a burrito out of the oven. #onbrand
Sex, or lack thereof, being wrapped up with guilt for over a year.
A piece of pencil lead in the palm of my right hand, circa seventh grade, that sits basically on top of my life line and which I feel is probably a bad omen of some kind.
I’m behind by two weeks, so bear with me, but this is week 13. Week 14 will be coming in the next couple of days and I’ll be back on track by Friday for week 15.
