orthostatic hypotension and me: a romance
i like to stand in front
of the mirror
stand up/sit down/stand up/sit down
and watch the light die in my own eyes.
fasinating,
that buzz
of human consciousness before the deafening crack
the string
of tightness in our chest-
stretch stretch snap
the psychedelic colors,
my blood
like lsd bouncing blue blue black
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what happens if this is number nine?
i think i was born this way. in a panic and
knowing that this is it.
i think i am a cat in my ninth life and
from the moment i crawled into the world,
squirming and skeletal, it was all panic.
i think i have lost something that cannot
be recovered. like i ruined the last eight
lives and am given one last
that i already know i will fail.
i think i am the kind of cat that no one wants.
in alleyways on fencetops under garbage bags,
the kind that ends up a pile of sticky fur
pressed against the asphalt of a highway.
i think my stomach sinks because i want
to be something more but am too afraid,
too sure that i am doomed. there is a
sinking premonition that my last lives
were ended on a desperate mewing note,
my claws grabbing on in denial. i think
of the pig in charlotte's web, and it echoes
in my head how he lived his life whining
'i don't want to die' knowing that he would,
he had to, he was a pig. but i think i am a cat
and there is no purpose. not even a price on my
flesh as something valuable, a profitable livestock.
nothing to love or be loved by. not an endearing
little pet to take care of. cats indulge in independence,
but perhaps inside they are bitter and lonely in the end.
i think i never wanted to be a cat, it is like being
trapped in a body i was never meant for. and the ribs
are restraining, the breathing is never enough and the
worst is being unable to speak. no cry for help that
a single soul would understand. here i am with no
language but panic, like the screeching of tires before
the inevitable car wreck. i think with eight lives behind
me, i can close my eyes this time and swallow the hurt.
i dont know if it is worse that i know what the metal
crushing my body feels like, or if it is worse to know
that i will never feel it (or anything) ever again. i think
i am a cat on my last life and you'd imagine after the first
lives i would not be afraid anymore. but i am a thing
of writhing panic and i think i was born this way.
chinese water torture
i once read something about prisoners that went insane
from a special kind of torture, where a single drop of water
was dropped onto their faces over and over and over. i
tried to imagine how in the world it could be
torture, something so painless and harmless. but
the rhythm of the water dropping was irregular, meaning
the victim couldn't anticipate the timing of the next drop.
and when water, second by second, time after time,
drips onto solid rock, it forms a
deeply scraped hollow.
no one told me that loneliness would be so loud.
that it would howl and tear at me like hurricane wind,
strong and wet with tears
and the noise is shattering, it means hiding
for cover until this is all over
i thought being lonely meant quiet, meant
hearing the silence of empty space
now i realize that it is a hunger, empty
in a painful reminding way
i am not lonely for just the people i had
their voices and the way i knew them
i am lonely for myself, the person i was
when i was with them, my voice, my thoughts,
the way i knew myself
i am getting older alone
and it feels so cold
it feels like being the person left behind
when everyone leaves and grows
in my mind there are words i dont say
and feelings i am unable to feel, being lonely
is one that my body wouldn't welcome and yet
somehow here i am starving for something i
never knew i wanted and still refuse to admit i
need. i am alway left wondering if i deserve it
after all, for being so cold and locked up
there must be something i did because i
am hiding my pain from myself and it spills out
my pores and i'll never have enough pots and pans
to catch it all before it's too late and everyone sees.
hide me from the world, hide me from my own eyes
but give me one person who looks at my burning pile
and sees a life. Will there be someone that looks at the
lines in my hands and speaks my body's language?
because no one does, no one. and it makes me feel
unhuman. i starve for understanding. can someone
look me in the eyes and hold my secrets and know my name?
its cold and lonely where i am, with water digging into my
skull in a way that could be beautiful to anyone else. could that
be how the grandcanyon was smoothed over or the little star shaped
grains of sand? what if they cry out in pain, but all that everyone else
sees is beauty? and the same way the stars burn and rot and rip
themselves to shreds, we call them small and beautiful and dreamy.
so here i am starving and lying about how much i hurt
because maybe its better to pretend it is
beautiful maybe that is
what everything does on this dead dying dirt. i am
drowning and thirsting and starving and bursting
and the poetic nature is pain. i can't sleep with all these
words crowded in my head- all my own- but where they come
from i'll never know. i've been alone long enough to hear voices
that come from the ground and the sky and
it might sound silly but they are there and i'm
not crazy, they're just as lonely as i.
and it suddenly occurred to me, we persons are built
with a rhythm. a heart pumping life force in/out/in/out
yours is so unlike any other. millions of little beats pulsing evenly
on a rhyhmically spinning planet. an even beat in wake or sleep,
we never live a moment without rhythm. and so it makes
sense to me how irregular drops of innocent water
could rip a man's sanity to shreds when his being relies
on a ticking clock, something to hear and know is true.
he hears the water is poisonous. he hears the drips uneven.
his brain believes he's poisoned. his heart believes it skips
every beat. he dies of poison, he dies of heart attack. i am lonely
and my body finally heard the news. it finally realized all
the thoughts in my head echo to myself, there is no one
else on this blue empty planet, me and my thoughts and my
uneven heartbeat. and now, the loneliness
aches like a deeply scraped hollow
the call of the cordiform void
there are things that make me grieve in deeper shades than blue
i've forgotten that sadness speaks a language i do not and we
live in separate homes now, so what is this sickening feeling
that takes her place? when i say that i am crying what i really mean
is that i hear a deep crack in my chest and am sure that the real me
is suffocating, ripping to get out, squeezing itself through tears in the
corners of my eyes, through deep-not-deep-enough sighs, through the
ache in my stomach like simmering coals it burns to have someplace to scream
and i cant get enough air or enough words to tell my mother that i am glass
she is water. glass moves like any liquid of science, but slow, so very slow and
someday solid. and someday shattered. and someday grains of sand. i could not tell her which phase of the life of glass i am in but i take deep breaths, blow, and imagine shaping myself into a glass bottle, putting a message in it, corking, floating out to sea. will someone find me? will someone pull me out of salt water and storms?
there are 7 billion pairs of hands on this earth that touch the same things and feel something different. 7 billion eyes that see the same world in 7 billion different stories.
this is how it is to be a single cell in the earth's body. to take up space and leave no footprint. there are people that speak dead languages,
people that are beautiful with their windows closed. stories only in minds, never on paper.
and even the idols wake up shivering at night afraid to be themselves, the people in power
feel their hearts drop because they've never reached tomorrow. and me, i am afraid
because i haven't met myself yet, i live with locked doors and tip toe quietly down the
halls like i am afraid to wake a monster. i don't know what to feel. this mask is here too long and my body grows itself to fit it. i leave like day, i exist in leaving. i leave the night
reluctantly, hanging on, like a game defeated. i leave the table hungry and wonder if the hungers add up someday. i leave something of my heart behind when i wake up from a dream like i've left all i've lived for. i tell myself the room is a prison, but there are moments when the sun comes in and i realize it is me, my body, my cold mind. this is a mourning
in some color i never learned. and that is fair. don't believe that there are no unknown colors to exist. they do. and did you see the eyes of the people empty where their heart fled away? from grief or loss of pain, they lost something and they see between color. where words end, color breathes heavily. at school we learn that the colorful animals are the dangerous ones. you know when you see the shade of grief's eyes. when i say i'm crying
i mean that i wash that color out of my own eyes, but somehow it sticks. i will say it again until i am more than a cell that keeps the world pumping. i will say it again, louder this time. yet there is no beautiful way to say that i am grieving.
tell me how im feeling//floatingawayfloatingaway
my fingers lost their magic touch, tips on keys they hover
no more words spill out, i grieve them like ive lost my lover
and its this covid world thats sucked the breath out of me
in an airtight fishbowl i forget to speak in poetry
my mood ring never changes from this deep indigo color
like it found a calm emotion & refused to take another
i keep it on like a talisman i’m calm i’m calm i’m calm
its begun to rust sickly green against the inside of my palm
a bing crosby song echoes from the kitchen to my locked door
mom sings white christmas, though shes never had one before
today i told her that i might just have to move away
she feigns hurt surprise, as if guilt will make me stay
we watch dust storm rain spatter the window’s muddy glass
and pretend its a wintery-cold storm to make time drag past
the grass is dead like scattered bones, there are no fall leaf trees
wind sucks at our front door's metal lock with a heavyladen wheeze
i force my fingers to write but cant understand the language they shape
and it translates in tears and panic attacks and unspeakable need to escape
someday i will remember how to eat without fighting and digging at my waist
ill write real words again and meet new friends and remember how things taste
my mood ring will shift tones and match the labels on its color chart
but for now i wonder how long it all will take in the waiting part
and oh
just tell her how you feel
because tomorrow is not coming
you will roll the red light without
noticing and crash metal to metal no
thoughts in between, some ironically happy
song on your car radio and you sing to it 'baby
i love you i love you' and you feel like you'll always have
another day another chance to tell her, and then you suddenly
breathe no more between the glass and metal scraps, you're gone
and please
just tell her how you feel
because tomorrow when she hears
the news of how there's nothing left of you
she'll be left behind with all the words you didn't say
and it aches and aches and aches let me tell you an old story
an old warning, the love is wonderful and someone always breaks
someone has to leave that is how time works at red lights and stop signs
just tell her now before she wakes up 40 years old married and missing you
tell her before the minutes sift past and in your last breath you sigh and say
i should have said i love you