7.4.22
PANDORA
so then
I choose to make mosaics from my rubble
cast gold into cracked pieces
do away with the spaces in between
those pockets of air we blamed for keeping us apart
it’s all bullshit
I bond back my pieces with something stronger
more beautiful
a little wiser a little older
something that reflects back
it shakes off the blame
and says
“it’s not your fault, it’s no one’s fault.”
and so it is
not my fault (or yours)
but it is my responsibility
and my privilege
to take ownership where I can
to wash off the stains of guilt and blame
with bravery and accountability
accountability is
after all
the privilege of autonomy
Pandora
“They gave Pandora a box. Prometheus begged her not to open it. She opened it. Every evil to which human flesh is heir came out of it.
The last thing to come out of the box was hope. It flew away.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Timequake
2.15.21
PANDORA
there’s no such thing as immunity to the pasts’ joys and grief
grief keeps the heart flexible – scarred but flexible
just ask the willow
PANDORA
2.23.21
all that comes from counting your hens before they lay
are hospital rooms and overworked nursers. Chattering teeth too anemic to build blood back to bravery.
they’re scared of the landmines (i still hear them in my sleep), we’re all scared of the landmines (be careful how loud you pop that soda), my bridges didn’t burn you see, they collapsed.
well, one collapsed – my mother nearly died that day
they blew up the other, sent the schoolbus flying off it – I nearly died that day
so no I don’t like bridges
maybe that does make me a chicken, but I’m beginning to be okay with that.
and I know you wont ever be, so go ahead, stick to counting whats in your pen, and i mine
you, your hens,
me my sheep
12.15.20
PANDORA
ive tucked in many my fair share of life-lint
feral moments so valuable you never share them with anybody
i’ve never tucked in shame
my body relating less and less to the body of those i love
afraid of become so raw that
one day ill smile to show the veins in my teeth
it knits the tongue to the palate
my tongue, that it is. She’s a skiddish little thing;
never could get past the neckties they made of her friends
when they gave these monsters words
she knows it also means giving them a voice
spent so long washing that country off my body
to find its city sculpt my heartframe
it’s infrastructure map my memory
etch my eyesight
how i love the passionfruit’s tart almost as much as I love it’s sweet
some people might think it a curse
but I find my country’s lesson a blessing
to refuse to un-love the things that kill you
PANDORA
12.6.20
imagine you’re graphite
and you’ve just been graced with erasers fingernails
that’s what it feels like
it feels like anxiety, like worry,
worry which is paralyzing.
Now, worry about paralysis.
Imagine your body becoming foreign, even hostile. Legs you’ve known so long and well are somehow there, but living out their life without you. Poof. Gone. Like magic.
Which… at least in this one instance is far worse than logic. Leave it to magic to re-fracture and re-numb the limbs after a perfect night. A few second’s disruption, and it was unhinged again. Like it had never left at all. That’s magic’s attitude. No harm done. As if it was as simple as a few minutes paralysis.
Shocking? Truth is not fully explosive, but purely electric. You don’t blow the world up with the truth. You shock it into motion. Or in my case, the pleading hope for motion to stay.
I can’t think of anything more alienating.
—
Edit a few days later:
It’s hard not to look back at that with optimism.
I know, old me would scorn my UN-realistic, unsympathetic cheeriness. Hear me out though; I’m a breath that doesn’t mind repeating itself. Living proof that sometimes you plan a funeral, but a birthday party shows up instead.
PANDORA
11.9.20
Trying to find a box or wrapping paper big enough for my soul’s play time. It’s impatient and childish like that. Growing too quickly for its old clothes, curious, and restless. It lets everything hold it, but unsatisfied, it wants nothing to keep it.
I keep fancies like tissue paper for the dampest of moments, pour myself into pulls and yearnings. You can’t ignore that. The pulls, or me.
I come a pundit of instinct, turning more hearts than heads. Try telling Kismet she’s in the wrong room and you’ll be damned to ever find the matching sock again. There’s no denying my presence.
I’m everywhere and always, coming from somewhere, never dropping the anchor. Clip the chains and tie them to a transient place. Drawn by a dream or running from a nightmare, holding down the moment’s wrists but ready to make a break for it if necessary. Figuratively, literally, metaphorically — any way you want to look at it– Keeping a bag packed. Just in case.
It’s that itch. The;
getting what you want, then wanting to want again.
PANDORA
10.21.20
i fear you’ve seen me un-done
Sleep paralysis is rooted in problems with REM sleep. There are two categories of sleep one experiences throughout the night: rapid eye movement (REM) and non-REM sleep.
i read somewhere that the reasons we don’t sleep at night, are the same reasons we don’t truly live during the day. i try not to think too much about what that means for people like me.
During REM, however, a person’s eyes will dart back and forth, but voluntary muscles are paralyzed (think your legs, not your heart). Kushida says this stage is when about 90% of dreams occur. Brain activity is similar to when a person is awake.
like your bed, or mine – all wrinkles and un-made sheets. Or the tealights on your dresser, or how the clothes i never folded in the starlight still kiss your floor good morning.
It’s coming out of REM sleep, when a person’s voluntary muscles are still paralyzed, that a person could experience an episode of sleep paralysis.
it terrifies me.
About 75% of the time, those experiencing sleep paralysis will hallucinate. “Most of the time, we’ll hear that it’s something frightening,” Kushida says.
to see you watch me frantically picking up pieces of well ironed habits. the things that fall apart shine a light on my ever so fucking precarious relationship with panic. i loose grasp of my anatomy the more time i spend in those in-betweens, watch cognizance slip from daylights, sense me crawl deeper into daydreams empty of structure or meaning. At some point they’re just open eyes making colors out of objects, a headache that doesn’t know where to hurt anymore, routine speech patterns slurred by sheer automation. in my comforts, i like to think myself disciplined enough to flip through pages of subtext. To place bets on arm wrestles between me and my imagination.
In fact, the hallucinations typical of sleep paralysis are frequently influenced by a person’s culture and described in terms of “paranormal activity.” There are descriptions from Newfoundland of an “Old Hag,” or witch sitting on the person’s body. In Japanese folklore, the same phenomenon is called kanashibari, which means “bound in metal.” Some researchers think sleep paralysis is to blame for reports of alien abductions.
that all means nothing. not when the aftershocks of grappling night fantasies leave you fog-irresponsive to mornings’ basic questions. im scared you saw me prism, and now you know me puzzle. not the pretty kind, either; pieces barbarically shoved into each-other to hold together the semblance of human. there’s remarkable shame in showing belly. i wanted so badly to make-belief i’d made habits out of power crafted substance; imagine the mortification when they’re exposed as nothing more than survival tactics. After all, what kind of person needs to make a bed?
This prevalence across cultures makes sense in light of Pennsylvania researchers’ systematic review of scientific studies across a 50-year period. The review estimates that 8% of the general population has one episode of sleep paralysis in the course of their lifetime. The study found that this number is variable within populations. For example, more than 30% of psychiatric patients had an episode of sleep paralysis, and the disorder is most common in adolescents.
im scared of the things you know now. the differences between you and i. you give up control, because you had control to give. i play hostage to my own brain, it holds me down at night. shows me faceless figures, cuts my lungs in half. it gags silent desperate hysterics while holding down wrists and ankles. the type that would make even the bravest person alive panic at shutting their eyes.
“Researchers are hoping to one day locate the genetic markers for the disorder, which has been shown to run in families.”
what scares me the most, however – is your collarbone. how it cradled my head in the throws of (what i hoped was) my country’s invisible (no one wants to see that shit) battlefield (i wish i could unsee it). chest-cavities turned pillows humming heartbeat lullabies in my ears. steady, repetitive, constant. it turns war-zone landscapes to sheep fields, and there’s no wolf here. Instead, the bruise i left on your shoulder levels with eyes choosing to see past aberrations– it skips, giddy joyous into sprinkler water as if saying “today you can’t, so ill soak it in for us both.”
“As of now, there is no cure.”
“For there is nothing quite so terror-inducing as the loss of sleep. It creates phantoms and doubts, causes one to questions one’s own abilities and judgement, and, over time, dismantles, from within, the body.”
― Charlie Huston, Sleepless