#wes jamison

[therumpus]

When has enough time passed for me to write it—how long do I have to wait before I am not in it anymore. I am waiting, but when can I rightly say in the past tense (and keep it there) that I was choked within seconds of losing consciousness by my husband—and have that be a statement of fact rather than perceived catharsis. When am I no longer emotionally there with my back against the fridge—the way everyone tells me I am still—still healing.

THE SUNDAY RUMPUS ESSAY: (On My Throat) by Wes Jamison.

[theyreallforyou]

When your index finger touches me there only slightly. Only you can touch me this way: the way of a lover. Slow and hardly perceptible. Fingernail. Mostly touching the individual hairs that make up that tiny pelt of what I've heard my mother call peach fuzz. Every mammal has it, I think, covering their entire body. The feel of it reminds me of my previous lover. A mattress on the floor, watching a movie. The forest between apartment and department store. Frozen pizza and appetizers, off-brand two-liters.

Wes Jamison - The Secret Garden

[theyreallforyou]

When you massage my back. Somewhere in a lower vertebra is my standing at the Fly overlooking the Mississippi. The only person I had ever loved surprised me, came up and embraced me from behind. At that moment, it began to snow. For the first time in years. But this memory isn't mine. It is someone else's. Part of that book that I read when I was too young--the same you are reading now as you travel by train an hour and a half to the suburbs. You are not the book's character, not affected the way I was. It isn't implanting itself inside of you. Like all those other books I read and think that I wrote myself. All planted along my spine.

Wes Jamison - The Secret Garden

[theyreallforyou]

And how I think that with age we all become heat resistant.

The Secret Garden - Wes Jamison