The Poetry Marathon

Still as a dead monk
Intentional ignorance of pain
No adjustments, no voice.
Brown mosquitos the size of
Hummingbirds feeding from the temple
Blood throws directly into
proboscis, a straw sipping
gently, buzzing still.

No thoughts. No words.
No writing or reading and
Ten Years. Ten days.
No friends. Little food.

No thoughts. No words.

When I can’t see the point.
Leaves of Grass covered in dew,
my heart covered in glass,
my liver coated in vodka,
my kidneys sick with psych meds.
My eyes clouded and confused
my intestines bloated with fear.
My my my.

Life no more bird worms.

These Leaves of Grass can
no longer protect me.
Could they ever, or did I
protect myself, armed and armored
with the memory of Carol Ann?

What I mean to say
is my body is prepared.
Maybe I can be safe.
I mean to say
Only Poetry Can Save Me.

What to say?
Just keep writing.
The first ones suck anyway.

This isn’t an Ars Poética.
This isn’t about a poem.
This is about fear and rage
and a hatred for them.

A whole class of people
dedicated to taking my choice
dedicated to controlling me,
dedicated to stealing my voice.

Bring out the guillotine.
Bring out your dead.
Bring your pitchforks.
We’re after their heads.

The end of the line, the middle
of the road. Where am I going?
A townhouse this time. Two
to a room, three rooms per unit.
Space for a third in the master.
Home with Kris again. Free
to come and go as I please,
but I only want solitude and quiet
and time to read. The tub is nice
and oddly long. I soaked most days.
Three hours of groups before noon.
Lunch. Leisure time. Self reflection.
For me, knitting and napping and writing.
Checks all the boxes.

“Anything under 11 hours a week
is considered outpatient.”
Art therapy Friday morning first.
Music therapy Friday morning second.

I saved every piece of artwork
Sang every single Friday.

Half a dozen repressed memories
unwillingly excavated.

My mind is haunted because it it built
atop a burial mound of pain and crisis.

Trauma bonding— night terrors
have me talking in my sleep, and Kris’s
night terrors have her respond.

Hospitalization, residential, PHP (partial hospitalization), IOP(intensive outpatient).

Not for nothing.

I begged and beat and burned
my hair trying to make it what
I thought it should be.

I’ve begged and beaten and burned
myself trying to make me
what I thought I should be.

My hair will never be straight,
and neither will I, I suppose.

I was handcuffed by Broward County
officers, loaded in the back seat
like luggage, closed inside. The plastic
felt like the bed of a truck with a hollow
for my cuffed hands. Plexiglass.
Guns on hips. They talked about dinner
plans and partner banter, while my mask
fogged my glasses and I sobbed in silence.
Admissions to Imperial Point was a large
room, eight reclining chairs. A shot of
Ativan felt like a flu shot. A shot of Hell dog,
and I woke on a plastic, springless mattress
perched on a plastic bolted bed.
Breakfast at 8am. First group at 9am.
Bolted tables and weighted chairs.
Twigs of pencils, no chocolate, hard
backs contraband. All quiet save
Meth Head Santa banging on
the window to the south ward with his
toothless mouth pressed against the glass.
“I’ve gotta get to work!” Hell dog
didn’t win that fight. Hours where
I laid in bed staring out my triple
paned windows at the Miami skyline.
I stared, studied, slowed my breathing,
let my mind sift out the large thoughts,
devour them, and sit in empty silence.
Caroline was quiet. Resigned. Lonely.
Roll over, let the clattering settle, stare
at the bolted bedside table, the shared
bathroom, the door that couldn’t close.
Still not Baker Acted.

If I was thin,
Nothing could stop me.

At 11, I thought I hated my hair.
All frizz and fluff and just
too large. My mother told me
I wanted sleek. I wanted straight.
I wanted what my sister had.
Nothing could get me there.

She tried braids, but fuzz
danced at the surface. Even
weighed down with thirty seconds
of Aqua Net, its will was too strong.

She tried hot oil, pulling
and scalding, and yanking with
each whimper. My scalp bled
and burned, and my hair shone
brightly, a halo floating above me.

She tried a curling iron
that always burned my ears.
There are scars that mark
her slips. They stayed for an hour,
maybe, until they cooled, then
my hair grew, the heat fertile soil
to bloom.

She tried hot curlers, their spikes
holding them fast, the burning
prolonged over night, a cap
covering my head to hold
the heat in, and the itching itching
itching that I couldn’t scratch.
They fell in the early morning.

She tried a perm. I ran
full speed through trees and grass,
zig zagging across an acre
to escape the chemical smell
and sting. My hair blossomed
into a sunflower, reaching away
and toward the light.

She taught me how to pull
it into a bun, to gel it all down
slick against my skull. It only lasted
to the afternoon. She gave me
mousse with the strongest hold
to tame it if I could. I could not.

I fought. Win. Lose. Win. Lose.

I grew tired. I stopped fighting.
I conceded. My hair slowed and showed
why she couldn’t be flattened,
burned, poisoned to fit
what my mother wanted, what I thought
I wanted. There was never
anything wrong with us. My hair
would never be sleek. It will never
be straight like my sister’s.
All she wanted was peace and to curl.

No one wants to live
to see their parents
become children, dependent,
vulnerable, leaning on canes
and walkers and others.

The mourning. The shift
from child to care giver.
The exhaustion.

No one wants to see it, to live
it. Roles reversed.

Guess I should have
checked out when
I was six.

Since I am alone every night
in my king sized bed, I keep books,
heating pad, water, by my wall.

Oh.

She makes so much more
sense now that I know
what it is to be too small
for your bed alone.

She kept her bible, newspapers,
cordless phone, by her wall.

Mine on the left, hers on the right.
Mirror, mirror, mirror.

She slept alone for 28 years.

That length of time is too
large for my brain, pushing
the edges outward. Bending.
Stretching.

How? How did she do it?
No dog or cat or plush
companion. Utterly alone.

How did she sleep, unmoving,
so when she woke her bed
looked undisturbed?

What other secrets was she
hiding? Whisper them through
the miles, across the years,
and into the heart of the child
you loved best.