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Today is May 31, 2015. I am alive and well.

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I was in bed for three days with a bad cold. Fever that made me sweat and gave me chills, body ache, sore throat, exhaustion. I was so tired that I told a friend in a text that I could not text because texting was too tiring. These three days reminded me of the two years I spent in bed at my grandmother’s eating chocolate cake and cheese danish and showering every other week.

These two years had me trapped beneath a stone slab laying on my chest and abdomen. It cracked, releasing me when I needed to go to the toilet or eat. On my trip to the bathroom, I ignored my reflection in the mirror, knowing it would only prove how dismal I felt and how hollow eyed I was.

I was so sensitive to sound that my grandmother’s foot steps down a carpeted hall drove me to madness. I wanted to shout at her “please stop walking and learn to fly” knowing she would do her best to step silently. As for flight, well, that belonged to another reality, another space and time. My grandmother would have done anything to make life more bearable for me, thus the chocolate cake and cheese danish.

I spent two years reading suspense novels, falling asleep to the murder of Joe and Alice, only to wake miserable once again, seeking solace in the world of books.

So having this cold frightened me. I thought how easy it would be to let the stone slab slip into place; armor against an unknown world. I had to remind myself that those two years were sixteen years behind me; lost to the ragged T-shirts I would put on one on top of the other hoping to mask my body odor.

It amazes me how true it is that our bodies hold memories. My body remembers that painful time of wishing I would die because I could not cope with the sun, I could not cope with waking, I could not cope with my grandmother loving me so much as to not be critical of the fact that I could not leave the house.

And then I left the house. I have had sixteen years of leaving the house. There is joy in my life today. Life is a steady stream of occurrences. I eat salmon and green salads. I bathe regularly. Simply said, I love. I love the way the breeze moves over my skin. I love the touch of my friends as we embrace, which will repeat itself the next time we meet.

My grandmother is dead now, but I love the way I can hold her memory in my palm, hear her feet sliding over the carpet, stare at her photo, knowing she is not missing but rises with me as I leave the house.

(I promise my next blog won’t be so long!)

Today is May 25, 2015. I am alive and well.

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Just for fun!……

The napkin is lovely, large white and starched. The napkin comes alive, quietly catching food. It earns its name. The work is easy; my lap is flat.

I ordered a veggie burger with sautéed mushrooms, sauteed  onions, and avocado–all on a bun that half ass does its work. I sympathize though, the burger hangs over the edge. How can a bun control a burger when the burger is larger than the bun?

I like restaurants. They are unencumbered by sun. They are off the beaten trail of masses of people all carrying keys to important buildings.

The restaurant I frequent is dimly lit with high ceilings and gorgeous chandeliers that do their work. The energy is one of “aim to please” with happy folks dipping into salsa or devouring sweet corn cakes.

A child cries. The parent can’t control the kid even though the parent’s bum is larger than the child.

The child is loud. The conversation I’ve been eavesdropping on is washed away. I will not find out who Mary is in all of this.

I finish my food with a gulp of water, ask for the check and thank the waitress. I am leaving full. The entree has done its job. It’s wonderful to be around things that work.

I cut my nails too short and am unable to pick the quarter up off the table. The quarter can’t work if it stays on the table. I ask the bus boy to please take the quarter. He does. All is right in the world.

Today is May 9, 2015. I am alive and well.

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Saturday morning. I’m on the treadmill at the gym taking care of cardio. I see him from the corner of my eye. When I shift my view to full frontal, it is not him. I remind myself that he is in Florida with the other woman. I still fluctuate between sadness, anger, and acceptance. If a tulip could talk, she would be angry from being pulled from the earth, sad that she is no longer rooted, but pleased she could show off her bulb in a beautiful bouquet of a variety of flowers.

I am moving through life as a single woman. Stress moving. It has been a year since he left me. I marvel often at how well I am doing without him. My movement takes me to the grocery store on my own where I buy spaghetti squash and blueberry jam, washed spinach and almond butter. I no longer need to buy with him in mind.

He asks me if I’m over him. Answer, no. He is deep under my skin. I find no reason to tug him off my bone. He is my friend, never to return as partner or lover. Damage does not make this possible. Water can be frozen. I am the cube in the ice tray. Warmth can return me to water. My fluidity circles friendship, circles love. The tips of my fingers tingle as I pet Grams and Annie, their cute cat selfs impossible to ignore.

I am a woman with a great many friends. The kind of friends who would walk through mud for me, and I for them. The kind of friends who cup my tears and then show me how to dry my hands.

He is one of these friends. I have quit trying to explain my love for him. It just is and I am glad for it.

Today is May 2, 2015. I am alive and well.

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I had a schizophrenic moment today. Yesterday, I put in new air filters. Today, I wondered if I put them in the right airflow direction, thinking that I didn’t and that I was breathing polluted air. Today, I thought because I had to jam them in that they are set to high and will catch on fire. I called Scottie for reassurance that all was well. I am somewhat reassured.

Paranoid, obsessive thinking is like gravel against the eardrum with a cockroach tucked in making a bed for himself. It is like a scratch on a CD of Green Day replaying the same “Fuck” while my car is stuck in the middle of a car wash, the thick ropey things surrounding all four sides so I can’t see out. It is thinking over and over again that one of my cats is going to get stuck outside in a hailstorm. My cats are indoor cats and I live in Arizona.

Most of the time I am free from obsessive thinking, so when it is happening it is five times as worse as it could be because it is so unfamiliar. Thank God when it slides out the side of my mouth and disappears in the  ether.

Paranoia is paralyzing. To date, I have been able to leave my house and enter the world for sometime. I don’t take entering the world for granted. I feel I am blessed every time I do. There are so-so days. And there are the glorious days. So-so when I swim through the tasks I have, leaving a tray of bubbles to pop behind me. Glorious are the days when the love I have for people and the love they have for me consistently causes small, silent eruptions; a Gerber Daisy pushed form the earth, tulips pushed from the earth.

Maybe you have noticed in some of my blogs I throw a word in that doesn’t quite make sense but the word sounds right. I think sound drives writing 25% of the time. With that, I’ll spring up, comforted by the fact that my bed is unmade and I can roll right in, covers up to my chin.

Today is April 18, 2015. I am alive and well.

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The poems that follow I wrote with Guy in mind when he was still in my life. Now that I have no lover, I wonder if I will  make one up and continue to write love poems. An imaginary lover would certainly cause me no  grief, unless of course I imagined he did. Ha. My intention is to have no lover in my life for a long time. I need time to just chill, as my niece would say. I toast to “chill in.” I can do this.

Love

She doesn’t know how the drapes came to be zippered shut. But they did. And locked. His light got tied behind his ears. The ball cap helped keep it in place. So when she met him that day for lunch, she was blind to the beauty he offered. No light pushed the sounds of love forward onto her plate of food. The meat was tough and the barbarian within signaled to her to take it into her own hands. Bite hard and pull ferociously at what remains outside the mouth. Just yesterday she accused him with small words of cheating. He assured her with bigger words that was not the truth. At lunch it became all too much and he cried tears onto wilted lettuce. They left for home without eating, her hand in his. She doesn’t know how the drapes came to be open.In tender light she lifted her skirt and invited him to come home.

Pre-Dawn

The sun has not dreamt itself awake, yet. Nor do I hear through the open window the excited nature of birds announcing dawn.

The microwave has quit its pulse. I hear you pull your bowl of oatmeal from its stomach the other side of the bedroom door. As with most mornings, I stretch my body the length of the horizon across the bed. Somewhere in the dark are the little dogs. I imagine their eyes open to the soft dark as mine are, wonder which God they embrace instinctively upon awakening. Breeze flutters through the window, stories my shin.

You crack the door, whisper “I love you” knowing I hear, knowing I pretend sleep, knowing you won’t resist that first impulse to tickle the arch of my foot…..you don’t . I laugh. Time pauses. And then there are birds, always birds.

Today is April 9, 2015. I am alive and fairly well.

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My writing has been as bad as a bat without night vision, his echolocation** not working. He doesn’t leave the roost in his cave dwelling for fear of running into a city building downtown. He’s afraid he won’t be able to make his way back before dawn, dawn the time all bats fear; the time the predators are out.

I would like to take flight as bats do. They’re the only mammals that fly. They leave in colonies and have harems. There is no war with bats, no jealousy, no fight to find the best roost or the prettiest female. In some places, people consider these fuzzy creatures a sign of bad things to come. In other areas, bats are thought to be good luck.

Night shades me. I like to walk out into it, leaving the light at home on for the cats, Grams and Annie. NIght allows the moon to wake and the sun to sleep. Eventually, I return to my bed and sleep, dreaming of gold coins.

Then comes dawn. I awake paranoid, afraid to begin the day before me. Like the bat, I oftentimes feel unsafe in light. The light is strong. If I turn it on myself, I recognize that I radiate like a gold coin, still, on the light gray concrete. I walk out and reach for the coin. Viola! I am past the threshold of my home, out the heavy door, the door heavy like stone, to heavy to break down. I am safe in my home. But I radiate outside. I mustn’t forget this. I mustn’t forget that I live.

**Echolocation is the process of using sound waves to locate surrounding objects. Among other things, it is how bats find insects.

Today is March 28, 2015. I am now 51, alive and well.

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There she was in the library. About four. Wearing a red tutu with little shoes that had lace socks frothing over the top. Her brown hair hanging straight down from her center part. She says to her mother, “I want a real movie.” I think, “what does that mean? No more Toy Story? No more Shrek?”

How do we lose our innocence? And what does that even mean? Is it when we are exposed to sex and violence? When good does not always win out over evil? I was about seven when I walked in on my parents having sex. I thought my father was killing my mother based on the fact of my mother’s moans. I ran away across the house, hiding in my closet. When the closet is not hiding monsters, it always seems like the safest place to be. I can’t remember if either of them came to find me. I am certain I emerged for dinner and was pleasantly surprised to see mother tossing a salad with tomatoes and avocado.

Still around seven-years-old, my parents took me and my younger sisters to a drive in theater to watch Death Wish. Death Wish has a violent rape scene within the first fifteen minutes of the movie. I remember feeling shame for my father for making such a bad choice in movies. Shame–maybe that’s what stole my innocence like that first paper cut…paper no longer just something to write on.

I don’t know if the little girl got her “real movie.” I do know how real Pinnochio is. Hopefully, the little girl will learn that things are not always as they seem. Good is not always good, and bad is not always bad and hopefully any confusion works itself out like a tortoise with its head out, waddling its way on a muddy sidewalk. Smell the mud. The mud is real. What better to enliven the senses than earth? Earth always has a way of being innocent and not innocent in the same breath. Allow the sun to harden the mud, the mud to crack, and then be washed away by a hose, leaving the sidewalk friendly. It really does all come out in the wash. I remember the froth of the lace socks. That is innocence.

Today is March 22, 2015. I am alive and shaking…

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…I won’t be going into why I”m so rattled, though.

I laugh because when I brought Grams and Annie home from the Humane Society they were basically feral. Now Grams is all over me most of the time. And Annie will come and snuggle up to me if I take a nap. Grams is a black fireball, always wanting to bring heat to my body. Annie is the soldier at the window, making certain we are safe. I am their mom, watching them prance around. Cats are certainly grateful.

I did not prance and was not graceful growing up. I was a gangly 6′ tall girl at 13. I left my body to spend time in my mind. I would appear to be sitting at my desk in ninth grade, but my eyes took a bow and I would be traveling by flight to Switzerland. I picked Switzerland because the Swiss seemed so beautifully neutral and anonymous. They don’t make the newspapers. There is no war in their country. I love chocolate and have a great respect for money.

While in Switzerland, I dreamt i covered huge canvases in bright colors. Today, they would be considered sister canvases to Rothko’s work. He the dark colors and me the bright. He the solemn one and me the free spirited one, a fly landing her and there and everywhere, terribly curious as to what the spot of life I live in brings. Rothko came to  a tragic end; he took his own life at a young age. I have had over ten suicide attempts in my lifetime. I am really bad at dying. It’s amazing that I will be 51 on Friday.

I live in my body today. I don’t need alcohol to do that for me like it did for so many years. My height at Christmas time is a beautiful thing; I can be in a crowded shopping mall and not suffocate.

Today is March 16, 2015. I am alive and well.

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They know she enters. Their cat eyes focus as snap dragons, their ears perk, the shape of the end of a butter knife. I take a breath in. Hold it as if I’ll be able to hear her. She is thinner than air, lighter than the flame at the end of a paper match. Death has left her to dust my desk.

I need more than cat knowledge. I need the miraculous–her framed photo to fall, my desk chair to quiver, her hands on my keyboard. I let breath out. Nothing changes in front of me. There is no mist.

But I feel her. She is warmth around my wrist. Pictures as memory–her teaching me to make a Greek salad, her on the toboggan with me, the snow not biting because she leans forward, wrapping her arms around me …I feel her coat as I do skin.

She is here as I feel the love for her. This love reaches out and comes to rest on a spindle. The love is invisible but strong. The spike of the spindle I imagine rotates like the bowl of a blender turning powered cocoa to chocolate syrup.

Mom, you make me bold. I am able to ride in an inner tube down the stream, opening into the river. I can jump off a cliff to the water below. I can write anything I damn well please. Ketchup mixing with mustard. A bare ass flashing me outside my window. President Obama not being given a warm welcome by all the vets at the Veteran’s Hospital.

Your mail came to me for a while. I don’t know how they found my address. I didn’t open it knowing you don’t need a bank account any longer. You don’t need coupons. You have no need to buy a car. Your mail made me sad. It was not you sending me letters. I miss you like I do leaves in autumn. Be at peace. Walk in the grass. Hold my love as you do fog.

Today is March 14, 2015. I am alive and well.

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Mom, why did you go? Was it Johnny tugging you into the grave. Yes, I know your liver quit…just like that, just like the pop of a champagne bottle, a very expensive champagne in the hands of a small child wed to the bottle because you can’t get off the couch for more booze. The child makes certain the ice trays are filled. I would fill a freezer full of ice for a conversation with you. Do they have nail polish where you are? Hopefully, Johnny showed up in briefs, welcoming you to the unknown–drop your skirt, unbutton your shirt, follow Johnny into the nearly naked.

I was there when they shut down the machines, keeping you lonely in a bed unable to squeeze a hand. Why did you go? Was it Johnny tugging you into the grave?

I’m glad you are free from the shackles of bourbon. I loved being your side kick…I had no idea I was poisoning you. Your reply, You couldn’t have known I was drowning. All you saw was a bed and no river.

She would say, I love you sweet. I have stopped looking in the mirror, stopped looking for the hand on my shoulder, nails painted a deep blue red.