Not Poetry Thursday, on memory and trauma

We Drink at the Attenuation Well

~Porsha Olayiwola

Motivated forgetting is a psychological defense mechanism whereby people cope with threatening and unwanted memories by suppressing them from consciousness.

            —Amy N. Dalton and Li Huang

              in Badagry there is a hung-

              ry well of water and memory

 

                                                         loss. in Badagry there was a well 

                                                         of people lost across a haven 

 

of water. in Badagry there was

a port overwhelmed in un-return. 

 

                                         to omit within the mind is to ebb

                                         heavenward. memory is a wealth 

 

                                                                 choking the brain in un-respons-

                                                                 ibility. violence in the mind and 

 

                                         the mind forgets in order to remember

                                         the self before the violence begot. 

in Badagry trauma washes ungod-

ly memory heavenward. in Bad-

 

                                       agry there is an attenuation well 

                                       meant to wish away a passage, 

 

                                                                      meant to unhaven a people.

                                                                      violence is underwhelming

 

                                       in return. what the body eats, 

                                       the mind waters. responsible 

 

is the memory for un-remittal. 

royal is the body for return. god is

 

                                                 the mind for wafting. forgetting 

                                                 is a port homeward. in Bad- 

 

                                                            agry hungry memory grows angry.

                                                            in Badagry the memories un- 

 

                 choke. trauma un-eats the royal. 

                 in Badagry there is a heaven 

 

                                                               of people responsible for the birth- 

                                                               right of remembering, for the well 

 

                                              of us across a haven of water

                                              overwhelmed in un-return.

Copyright © 2020 by Porsha Olayiwola. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on June 17, 2020 by the Academy of American Poets.

Poetry Thursday - today and timely

I Can’t Breathe

~Pamela Sneed

I suppose I should place them under separate files

Both died from different circumstances kind of, one from HIV AIDS

         and possibly not

having

taken his medicines

the other from COVID-19 coupled with

complications from an underlying HIV status

In each case their deaths may have been preventable if one had

         taken his meds and the

hospital thought to treat the other

instead of sending him home saying, He wasn’t sick enough

he died a few days later

They were both mountains of men

dark black beautiful gay men

both more than six feet tall fierce and way ahead of their time

One’s drag persona was Wonder Woman and the other started

         a black fashion magazine

He also liked poetry

They both knew each other from the same club scene we all grew up in

When I was working the door at a club one frequented

He would always say to me haven’t they figured out you’re a star yet

And years ago bartending with the other when I complained

         about certain people and

treatment he said sounds like it’s time for you to clean house

Both I know were proud of me the poet star stayed true to my roots

I guess what stands out to me is that they both were

gay black mountains of men

Cut down

Felled too early

And it makes me think the biggest and blackest are almost

         always more vulnerable

My white friend speculates why the doctors sent one home

If he had enough antibodies

Didn't they know his HIV status

She approaches it rationally

removed from race as if there were any rationale for sending him home

Still she credits the doctors for thinking it through

But I speculate they saw a big black man before them

Maybe they couldn’t imagine him weak

Maybe because of his size color class they imagined him strong

said he’s okay

Which happened to me so many times

Once when I’d been hospitalized at the same time as a white girl

she had pig-tails

we had the same thing but I saw how tenderly they treated her

Or knowing so many times in the medical system I would never have been

         treated so

terribly if I

had had a man with me

Or if I were white and entitled enough to sue

Both deaths could have been prevented both were almost first to fall in this

         season of

death

But it reminds me of what I said after Eric Garner a large black man was

         strangled to

death over

some cigarettes

Six cops took him down

His famous lines were I can’t breathe

so if we are always the threat

To whom or where do we turn for protection?

Copyright © 2020 by Pamela Sneed. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on June 18, 2020 by the Academy of American Poets.

So Much in so Few Words, not Poetry Thursday

Tender Buttons [Mildred’s Umbrella]
 ~Gertrude Stein

A cause and no curve, a cause and loud enough, a cause and extra a loud clash and an extra wagon, a sign of extra, a sac a small sac and an established color and cunning, a slender grey and no ribbon, this means a loss a great loss a restitution.

This poem is in the public domain.

For the Raza, not Poetry Thursday

Dear Buffalo, Dear Zeta or To a Few of My Dead or Nearly Dead Tíos
 ~Joseph Rios

I see my dead father's face in your face.
My furled eyebrow, these puffed cheeks
weep into a pillow of inherited hands.
Tío, I still don't know what to do
with this buffalo body. I crush tea cups
every time I raise them to my pursed lips.
How do I tenderize the meat on my bones?
This morning, I dry heaved a vat of foam
into a toilet in Tampa and found no art in it.
Who tells us we deserve to die?
My Tío, you, the one with a brown beret,
who saw the hydrogen bomb blow
from an aircraft carrier at Bikini Island,
the one with Hep C and a quiet wife,
I don't know if you're still alive,
but I pray this world has softened
you with its firm kneading hands,
that you are still able to ride your bike
up Homsy to the liquor store on Cedar
and can still reach the oranges in the yard.
Tío, mi tío, when you wet the bed,
is it still my Tia's job to change the sheets?
From the kitchen, I see the twelve foot spear
over the maguey. I see its fresh blooms
and know it is about to die. I wonder
if it is better to disappear into Aztlán
or Mazatlán or Mazapan the way you did
or stay in Prather or Marysville and slowly fade
into a sofa chair and reruns of Bonanza.
Is there honor in being shot and skinned? 
      like Ruben?
Hacked up in a hospital for lymphoma research? 
Poked and drained with the swollen face of 
      a failed liver?
How many more fists will be raised until we can 
     no longer,
or better yet, don't have to? I'm tired of thinking 
     these things.
Come back, Tío, or whatever. My mom saved you 
     a plate.
The street dump came by and I got rid of 
     grandpa's clothes.
I found your mesh t-shirt here and I've been 
     wearing it.

Copyright © 2019 by Joseph Rios. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on November 27, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets.

not Poetry Thursday

Labyrinth
~Kenyatta Rogers

I’ve lost something and I can’t describe
what it is
_____________

and what if that’s my job
to say how empty an absence is
_____________

like rolling 2 gears together
and maybe teeth are missing in one
or both
_____________

or maybe trying to grind
two stones that are
polished and smoothed 
_____________

I’ve always liked
a little grit
_____________

but sand in my shoes
or in my hair
_____________

is like shattering
a glass in carpet
and using a broom to
get it out
____________

I can’t describe
what it’s like to
sit on opposite ends
of a park bench and
not know how
to get any closer
____________

I miss so many things
and I’ve looked through my piggy
bank and only found pennies
____________

a pile of things that are
almost completely worthless
_____________

a shoebox full of sporks
a well with a bucket and a rope
that’s too short
_____________

sometimes in my room
it’s so dark that if I wake
up I won’t know if it’s morning or night
_____________

imagine being someplace you know
so well but are lost and don’t have any idea
how to get out
____________

the rule is, put your right hand out
lay it on the wall, and follow
____________

sometimes the rules don’t apply to all of us
I don’t want to sleep here again tonight

Copyright © 2020 by Kenyatta Rogers. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on February 26, 2020 by the Academy of American Poets.

Poetry Thursday, Elegy

Elegy, Surrounded by Seven Trees
~Rachel Eliza Griffiths
              for Michele Antoinette Pray-Griffiths

Ordinary days deliver joy easily
again & I can’t take it. If I could tell you
how her eyes laughed or describe
the rage of her suffering, I must
admit that lately my memories
are sometimes like a color
warping in my blue mind.
Metal abandoned in rain.

My mother will not move.

Which is to say that
sometimes the true color of
her casket jumps from my head
like something burnt down
in the genesis of a struck flame.
Which is to say that I miss
the mind I had when I had
my mother. I own what is yet.
Which means I am already
holding my own absence
in faith. I still carry a faded slip of paper
where she once wrote a word
with a pencil & crossed it out.

From tree to tree, around her grave
I have walked, & turned back
if only to remind myself
that there are some kinds of
peace, which will not be
moved. How awful to have such
wonder. The final way wonder itself
opened beneath my mother’s face
at the last moment. As if she was
a small girl kneeling in a puddle
& looking at her face for the first time,
her fingers gripping the loud,
wet rim of the universe.

Poetry Thursday

Holdfast
~Robin Beth Schaer

The dead are for morticians & butchers
to touch. Only a gloved hand. Even my son
will leave a grounded wren or bat alone
like a hot stove. When he spots a monarch
in the driveway he stares. It’s dead,
I say, you can touch it. The opposite rule:
butterflies are too fragile to hold
alive, just the brush of skin could rip
a wing. He skims the orange & black whorls
with only two fingers, the way he learned
to feel the backs of starfish & horseshoe crabs
at the zoo, the way he thinks we touch
all strangers. I was sad to be born, he tells me,
because it means I will die. I once loved someone
I never touched. We played records & drank
coffee from chipped bowls, but didn’t speak
of the days pierced by radiation. A friend
said: Let her pretend. She needs one person
who doesn’t know. If I held her, I would
have left bruises, if I undressed her, I would
have seen scars, so we never touched
& she never had to say she was dying.
We should hold each other more
while we are still alive, even if it hurts.
People really die of loneliness, skin hunger
the doctors call it. In a study on love,
baby monkeys were given a choice
between a wire mother with milk
& a wool mother with none. Like them,
I would choose to starve & hold the soft body.

Poetry Thursday, May...

To Theodore
 ~George Marion McClellan

Such are the little memories of you;
They come and go, return and lie apart
From all main things of life; yet more than they,
With noiseless feet, they come and grip the heart.
Gay laughter leading quick and stormy tears,
Then smiles again and pulse of flying feet,
In breathless chase of fleeting gossamers,
Are memories so dear, so bitter-sweet.

No more are echoes of your flying feet.
Hard by, where Pike’s Peak rears its head in state,
The erstwhile rushing feet, with halting steps,
For health’s return in Denver watch and wait.
But love and memories of noiseless tread,
Where angels hovered once, all shining fair,
To tuck you in your little trundle bed,
Kneel nightly now in agony of prayer.


I woke this morning thinking of my brother who would have been 59 next week. April is cruel and May is bittersweet... here we go again...

Poetry Thursday

The Body Remembers
~Yusef Komunyakaa

I stood on one foot for three minutes & didn’t tilt
the scales. Do you remember how quickly

we scrambled up an oak leaning out over the creek,
how easy to trust the water to break

our glorious leaps? The body remembers
every wish one lives for or doesn’t, or even horror.

Our dance was a rally in sunny leaves, then quick
as anything, Johnny Dickson was up opening

his arms wide in the tallest oak, waving
to the sky, & in the flick of an eye

he was a buffalo fish gigged, pleading
for help, voiceless. Bigger & stronger,

he knew every turn in the creek past his back door,
but now he was cooing like a brown dove

in a trap of twigs. A water-honed spear
of kindling jutted up, as if it were the point

of our folly & humbug on a Sunday afternoon, right?
Five of us carried him home through the thicket,

our feet cutting a new path, running in sleep
years later. We were young as condom-balloons

flowering crabapple trees in double bloom
& had a world of baleful hope & breath.

Does Johnny run fingers over the thick welt
on his belly, days we were still invincible?

Sometimes I spend half a day feeling for bones
in my body, humming a half-forgotten

ballad on a park bench a long ways from home.
The body remembers the berry bushes

heavy with sweetness shivering in a lonely woods,
but I doubt it knows words live longer

than clay & spit of flesh, as rock-bottom love.
Is it easier to remember pleasure

or does hurt ease truest hunger?
That summer, rocking back & forth, uprooting

what’s to come, the shadow of the tree
weighed as much as a man.

los dias nefastos comienzan de nuevo

It's cold and foggy out this morning, it fits perfectly with my state of mind and mood.

I feel both like I am walking in the fog and yet clear, painful memories keep cutting deep.

Tears flow just thinking about the trauma of that morning six years ago.

I'll come back and tell you more if I have the strength, for now, please just send me peaceful thoughts.
-------------

4.22

Six years ago today, we forced the doctors to sit with all of us ... to explain what was really going on with my sister.

Six years ago today, we let go.

Well, I don't know that we really let go. I didn't let go. But the headache I had been suffering lifted for the first time in three days.

I have to construct a wall around my heart to even write these words.

I wonder if I will ever be far away enough from this to actually remember those days in the hospital. I wonder if those days will remain in the "nefastos" category forever.

And tears fall down my face and little splashes of tears dirty my glasses, and I still can't REMEMBER, but the grief pierces my heart.

And even though I cannot will myself to remember all that happened in those days, I get flashes of the story as if it were a movie, and sometimes these wake me from sleep.

In sleep, I am in that panic mode of what can I do to make this stop. I used to be able to change the trajectory of my dreams, but this is not just a nightmare, it is reality.

Yesterday we sat around the table and shared some of the the trauma of the last six year with a friend we haven't seen in a while.

The tears welled up in her eyes. I felt bad, but we don't talk about it, and her presence gave us the space to do it.

4.23
I am exhausted. Sleep is hard, not as bad as it was all those years ago. But in the darkness, I remember that night I arrived. I had the mijo with me. His dad was at the hospital over night with Chila. As soon as the room was dark, the mijo asked me, Do you think she can get better?

What could I say? I told him I did.

You can't expect a miracle if you don't believe.

Last week, after six years, we talked about the trauma. I had the mijo with me for three days, and as always, it was bittersweet. And he asked me as soon as we were alone. Nowadays the questions are not as straightforward as they were that night. He asks a really hard, oblique question. He sees how I handle it. If I say something he can trust, I might get another one. I have to guess at context and meaning. I have to navigate the bombs. And if I do a good job, I get a little window into what is bothering him.

This time, eventually, after several hard questions, I said to him that he is allowed to have emotions ... that the trauma of losing someone when he was so young will stay with him, that it is okay to talk about it, to take care of himself.

I reminded him that at the hospital he was so worried about others - it's who he is, it's what he inherited from her.

He had a box of tissues, and if he saw a tear fall down someone's face, he was at that person's side, offering solace. He was scared to death, and he was consoling others. And afterwards, he was so worried about his dad, his own emotions did not get to be aired.

I took him to grief group every week. I suggested the one on one, but he didn't want to talk about it.

And now, here we are, and I worry, but I am glad that he still trusts me.

And I worry that if I could have just cried in front of him that maybe I would have helped him more. But even now I can't just let go and wail even though my soul is doing just that.

I am exhausted.

I say that feeling emotions is exhausting.

But maybe it holding them in that is exhausting.

Poetry Thursday, um... got stuck in draft folder...

Dor
~Nathalie Handal

We walk through clouds
wrapped in ancient symbols

We descend the hill
wearing water

Maybe we are dead
and don’t know it

Maybe we are violet flowers
and those we long for

love only

our unmade hearts

On attends, on attends

Wait for Duras and Eminescu
to tell us in French then Romanian

light has wounds
slow down—
memory is misgivings

Wait until the nails
get rusty
in the houses of our past.

Poetry Thursday, grief, again...

Poof
 ~Amy Gerstler

Here on my lap, in a small plastic bag,
my share of your ashes. Let me not squander
them. Your family blindsided me with this gift.
We want to honor your bond they said at the end
of your service, which took place, as you’d
arranged, in a restaurant at the harbor,
an old two-story boathouse made of dark
wood. Some of us sat on the balcony, on black
leather bar stools, staring at rows of docked boats.
Both your husbands showed up and got along.
And of course your impossibly handsome son.
After lunch, a slideshow and testimonials,
your family left to toss their share of you
onto the ocean, along with some flowers.

You were the girlfriend I practiced kissing
with in sixth grade during zero-sleep
sleepovers. You were the pretty one.
In middle school I lived on diet Coke and
your sexual reconnaissance reports. In this
telling of our story your father never hits
you or calls you a whore. Always gentle
with me, he taught me to ride a bike after
everyone said I was too klutzy to learn.
In this version we’re not afraid of our bodies.
In this fiction, birth control is easy to obtain,
and never fails. You still dive under a stall
divider in a restroom at the beach to free me
after I get too drunk to unlock the door. You still
reveal the esoteric mysteries of tampons. You
still learn Farsi and French from boyfriends
as your life ignites. In high school I still guide you
safely out of the stadium when you start yelling
that the football looks amazing as it shatters
into a million shimmering pieces, as you
loudly admit that you just dropped acid.

We lived to be sixty. Then poof, you vanished.
I can’t snort you, or dump you out over my head,
coating myself in your dust like some hapless cartoon
character who’s just blown herself up, yet remains
unscathed, as is the way in cartoons. In this version,
I remain in place for a while. Did you have a good
journey? I’m still lagging behind, barking up all
the wrong trees, whipping out my scimitar far
in advance of what the occasion demands. As I
drive home from your memorial, you fizz in
my head like a distant radio station. What
can I do to bridge this chasm between us?
In this fiction, I roll down the window, drive
uncharacteristically fast. I tear your baggie
open with my teeth and release you at 85
miles an hour, music cranked up full blast.

What is so hard about grief is precisely this: (note from the author when her poem was posted on the Poem of the Day (emphasis mine):

 “An elegy that blends predominantly real and a few fictionalized details, this poem was written in honor of a friend who I met way back in fifth grade, who died last year. The loss of this bright, adventurous, beautiful woman who’d been my friend since before either of us wore a bra, since I had braces and hair down to my hips and she was a tall leggy pre-hippie with a cool nickname, who’d coached me through so many ‘firsts,’ (first drunkenness, first crushes, first sex, first drugs, etc., etc.) who had been such a beacon, is hard to process. Poems being one of the ways we can attempt to speak to and of the dead, this poem is for C., who was always 10 steps ahead of me.”

How do you speak of the dead and how do you keep your loved one alive?

Everyone going through grief will tell you, in lucid moments, that talking about your loved one is bittersweet; it is like that bruise you touch to ignite the memories. Of course, it is painful to recall your loved one is no longer here. But whether we like it or not, especially in the first few years of loss (yes YEARS), the knowledge that your loved one is gone is with you like the air around you. Those loved ones linger in every word, every memory, every breath. And, the thought that others will forget what is foremost in your mind, is even more painful. 

It is so very interesting how the memories have come to me over the last six years. As we approach the sixth anniversary of my sister's death, I am remembering the months before her death. We were all desperately trying to survive the death of my brother, gulping for life like someone drowning gulps for breath.

And then she was gone. No, then she was in the hospital and we were having to let her go.

I thought I had borne the greatest pain when I watched my brother's body dropped into a grave. It changed my relationship with cemeteries. It made me hate the place that took him to forever.

But this was so much more painful. So painful in fact that I tried to turn off life all together.

We were on the third day of being in the hospital when a friend noticed I hadn't eaten.

I remember that, but most of the rest of those days I do not remember. I only remember pain and hollow and a horrible headache. My head recalls the pain, as I write this, it explodes in the same pain.

In the past few months, I have been able to approach the memories of those days. Not full on remembering, but tentative glances through the portholes. I am still not sure what is real and what is distorted.

But there are other memories, too, that pop into my mind. Memories that are now only mine - of time with my sister and my brother - stories that only we three knew, that only we three remembered.

I wonder how I will learn to say good bye to them, or if I have to... and it hurts.

Poetry Thursday, for Chila

A Little Bit
 ~Eileen Myles

It’s a little bit
true that the
hole in my jacket
pocket
the breast pocket
yeah all relaxed
has a hole &
pens keep
slipping through
one’s in the lining
but this one
perched
now it’s a writing
bird
silly black out there
wants to
tell its
song. Miguel’s
book was
in the air &
I was on
a train
my feet are cold
and you wouldn’t
be in the
air so
long it doesn’t happen
like this
there’s no climate
in a plane
and I was in one
but not on
earth
my mother
is gone
each thing I do
is a little
bit wrong. I’m willing
to apologize
but they never
help it’s
just pointing
out the hole
& people
forget but I
won’t forget
you

Dia de los Muertos

Take a look at this face. Her name is Evie; well, she goes by Evie.

See that feisty look? See that strength? She that twinkle in the eye that tells you she will go toe-to-toe with you happily.

For the past five months, she had been battling leukemia.

I don't know her, but I know her.

That is to say, I have been FB friends with her dad, who I also don't know personally, for several years. In those years, he has posted seriously funny stories about Evie. With each one, I became more and more smitten with this girl.

She reminds me of our Evie with her quick wit and feisty spirit.

When they announced in June that she was about to embark on this fight with cancer, my heart sank.

But my instinct told me to hope. To believe. To fight with her.

When they started looking for an out of family marrow donor, I did all I could to get more people sign up for Be the Match. [If you haven't signed up, you should, someone's life could depend on it.]

And I continued to hope, to believe, to fight with her.

When they found a match, I celebrated. And hoped and believed.

I thought somewhere back in my mind, for her to need a bone marrow transplant, the cancer has to be really bad. It is not first line defense. It is brutal ... painful for the donor but truly brutal for the recipient.

When they started the process, I hoped and believed and feared.

I watched on FB with each day to see if the graft would take. And it did. And I was relieved.

And then the rest of her body began to die.

It really is the only way to say it. Some month and a half after the transplant, the infections had turned to sepsis and the kidneys and liver were nearly shut down.

I raged against this reality. I wanted it to not be true. I wanted a miracle.

And then she was gone.

Despite the enormous grief I have suffered in the past six years (how can it be six years?!), I cannot imagine the fresh hell her family endures right now. I know that the road of life without Evie will be long and treacherous.

On this Dia de los muertos, I am going to add Evie to the altar. And I will probably cry some more.

Poetry Thursday

Leaving
 ~Allison Adelle Hedge Coke

No matter how he wrested himself silent in night,
six days post-stroke he woke fluent in former languages,
backtracking this time here.

Mercy nurses, attendants, remedied in their own.
Once he registered, all he cawed out was
          if it’s too far gone, we need to talk.

     All of this, what I am, doesn’t know how to die.
     All I know how to do is survive. All I ever done.

     If it’s time, tell me, tell me, give me four days.
     I’d like to have that blanket Dustin designed.
     Damnit, I hate to leave this beauty,           life.

On the fourth, came the Pendleton, delivered
right on time. His breath slowed, eased, then quit.
That was it.

After some hours the rest of us slept.
Some of us sleep still left.

9.19

Since September 19, 2012, everything in my life is either pre-9/19 or post-9/19. The myriad of other cascading tragedies all fall underneath this day.

The sadness clouds my vision - and I never know if I should stop and cry, soldier on, tell people why it is a hard day, or stay in bed (or any combo of those actions).

Last year, the first year I was in a "real" job since Greg died, I took the day off. I could not predict what the emotions would be... being away from home and not having a ritual. I have either gone with my mother to church or gone in solidarity to church away from her. But church is not a safe or happy place for me, so it is not really an option.

This year, with a horrible deadline looming, I could not even entertain taking the day or even a few hours off.

It turns out that all the hard work I put into the project is for naught. My piece, such as it is, is done but it broke the system, so nothing works. Now those who should be fixing the problem are pointing fingers (at me, of course) instead.

At first I wanted to scream at them. But then I did my little pivot, and I thought: "At least I could scream at them if I wanted to." I am alive. I am breathing in and out and their pettiness cannot take that away from me, unless I let them.

Don't get me wrong, I am irritated. I am so irritated, angry, frustrated, exhausted (after putting in over 12 hours for the past two days and getting little to no sleep for the past three nights).

But, perspective is lending me a hand in bringing down my blood pressure.

This is the email that I want to send colleagues today:
"I will happily take the hit for [our project] not working. We can say I misunderstood or took it upon myself to implement a fix that was not appropriate, or whatever you want. But I have one condition: next time a colleague asks for your help with a project, stop and listen. Give that colleague an hour of your time. Don't say, "I don't know any more than you do." Or send the person away to someone else who will also throw up his/her hands. Answer emails. Stop long enough to figure out what the issue is before you dismiss it as not your problem.

I will take the fall. You can have my job if you like. It will not make [the project] work. It will not help in getting [the project] to work. But spending some time collaborating and assisting your colleagues just might make all of this work a little more smoothly."

Here is the part I also want to send but probably wouldn't:

"Six years ago today my brother died. He was the person I was closest to in the whole world. When he left this universe, he took parts of me with him that cannot be replaced. It was the worst day of my life. It irrevocably changed me.

Your pettiness in pointing fingers rather than helping or even accepting your part in how [the project] doesn't work today is so small compared to that loss."

Ok... out of my system, carry on, internets.

Poetry Thursday, actually a quote

Sorrow, 
accumulating in 
one's heart, 
may one fine day 
burst into flames 
like a haystack, 
and everything will burn away 
in the fire of extraordinary joy. 

~Mikhail Prishvin.

April again

[April 18]
First there were días nefastos. And those were hard enough. 

Excruciating if I am going to be honest. 

I would do any thing to numb myself, food, drink, binge tv, sleep if I could manage it. And if I could get through those days without crawling up into a ball on the floor then I could make it through the month. 

But then April struck again and again, with a vengeance unimaginable if you haven't suffered loss after loss. 

It really is like trying to keep your head above water as the waves crash around you and the riptide tries to pull you out into the ocean of grief. 

The valiant thing would be to face the grief. But the truth is I don't always feel I have the strength. 

I was taught to not cry. I was taught to be the toughie as my dad calls me. 

For better or worse I also carry in my DNA the tendency to hold things in. And to explode when I cannot stand completely still or can no longer keep the lid on. 

Picture the bottle of soda exploding. A bottle because it is clear And you can see the eruption coming. 

In the past five years I have sometimes practiced not exploding. Noticing and holding back even as I could feel the emotions course through my body: back pain, stomach aches, stiff neck and painful jaw.

No matter how hard to try to hold back the tide, it comes. 

Explosions inside your body are painful. And dangerous. 

[April 19]
The first tears are the hardest. They cut. Hot, painful, angry tears.

If I get one out, the anguish of getting it out leaves me exhausted.

I fight the urge to get through that first tear like a baby fighting sleep: irrational, angry, self-destructive.

A friend had asked me, maybe more than once, what I had planned to do. She asked what support did I need. I was confused.

It is not that I had forgotten. It was that I was trying so hard to forget. Work had obliged piling insane amounts of tasks in front of me. I greedily volunteered to do more work! What a team player.

But then I was just hiding. 

And feeling grumpy.

Something stupid happened at work. I left super late. I was upset as I walked to my car (oops to the parking lot where I usually park but hadn't parked).

Everything felt stacked against me. Hot tears in my eyes for no apparent reason.

Then I remembered. It was five years since I had talked with my sister. 

And the memories came flooding back, but not like memories, like the most vivid deja vu you have every experienced.

I remembered the pit in my stomach when my brother called to tell me that my sister was in the hospital. I had just sat down at my favorite cafe to work. Work was not easily achieved at this point only seven months in from my brother's death. Quiet time to work usually set me down the grief spiral. But I had been determined to work, to be productive, to concentrate long enough on something to make progress.

I breathed deeply and tried to talk myself off of the ledge.

I called my sister's phone, and she picked up. She gave me the briefest version of what was going on ... the doctors did not know what it was. She sounded tired. She sounded scared. But like the dutiful older sister, she pivoted the conversation. I told her about my committee giving me a hard time about setting up meetings so that I could move forward with my exams. [I had already had to postpone them after my brother died. Seriously, though, what was I thinking, I couldn't focus for an hour, how was I going to make it through seven days of writing their three damned papers?]

She told me how sorry she was that they were making it so hard for me.

She comforted me.

That is exactly who she was ... not wanting to talk about her own grief over our brother or her fear about this mysterious illness. [Now we all wonder if this wasn't her body exploding because she did not talk about the grief.]

Tears streamed down my face as the memories flooded ... not the hot tears that fight their way out of my eyes. These were the faucets tears, they stream right down my face, no strangled breath, no heaving chest, no visible emotion, just the tears channeling rivers down my face, splashing onto my glasses and creating wet spots on my shirt.

If my tears could work this way on the regular, maybe ...

[April 24]
For the next several days, I said aloud I was grieving to quite a few people.

Yes, I do want an award for that. It is hard.

Maybe it is especially hard for me to ask for help.

Maybe I just needed to say aloud that I was grieving so I could encourage myself to continue to walk through that door.

It did not get easier to relive the horror of those days five years ago. There is no closure to be had.

But it did get somewhat easier to release some of the grief through tears... usually at 4 am which is weird and tiring.  I spent the entire week exhausted. I hid from people over the weekend.

I want to acknowledge that beyond being really hard, I was able to notice pleasant.

I take them as signs from the universe encouraging me to be grateful that I am breathing in and out regardless of how much pain I feel.

There was the gray fox waiting for me to pass by on the road home.

Of course, the dog and cat greeting me everyday with their comfort, sometimes portrayed as their need for attention.

There were all the pink trees and flowers blooming because spring has finally sprung.

There were countless check in texts and messages reminding me that I am loved.

And there were these signs, chalked strategically outside my home ... I know they were not meant for me, but they sure felt like they were speaking to me on that day. 

Bruised

There is a deep well of pain, but it is like an old bruise. I only feel it when something pushes up against it. Really hard.

In the span of two days, I heard from three people who I care for deeply about the loss of a loved one. In each case, I knew the person who died, but not awfully well. I knew each well enough to mourn their loss to the universe, but not well enough to speak to their lives.

But the losses buffeted me anyway. Gently, at first, slow tears welled in my eyes and my heart was full of compassion for my friend who lost her mother, her father, her boyfriend.

Next the circumstances threatened to blow me over.

One is a mother whose funeral the daughter will not be able to attend lest she lose her ability to stay in this country. Damned GOP and their ridiculousness. The rage, the helplessness, the anguish I feel is only a small measure of what that daughter feels.

One is a daughter who has lost now both mother and father in the span of four months. She is in shock right now. She can believably say she is glad to not see either in pain. She is heartened that she and her sister did all that they could to bring their parents comfort in their last days. But the hard road of living in a world without those parents, whose strength and faith and love are measured by their daughters' lives, is just beginning. The first year is shock and rawness, but the blinding pain is waiting just around the corner. The second year will feel like the year of firsts - first Christmas without them, some milestone the grandparents did not get to see, and the need/yearning to have just one more talk about something with mom or dad. I know this road too well, so the pain feels fresh as if someone has just fiercely slapped me across the face.

One is a girlfriend (seems odd to call a grown woman that), a lover, a confidant who lost her love before they could really begin a life together. These circumstances are the ones that spring from my mouth first when I talk about these losses. In some way, they are the lesson: don't wait; live now; do what makes you happy; be with the person who brings you joy. It is remorseful grief, biting like the memory of tripping over something in public but not falling. It is deep and imperceptible to those around you, but it winds its way around your heart, threatening to squeeze the life out of it. This might be why one tries to grasp on to the lesson, cheerfully determined to not have to live this remorse again. But the deep loss of a loved one will not just rest in remorse, it will coil through her body, when she alone causing her body to writhe and her mind to seek oblivion.

I am unable to do more for these people than write them notes to say my heart aches with theirs.

But my grief is so close to the surface that my tears are for my losses and the anguish of grief as much as it is for theirs.

Poetry Thursday

I felt like I was here ... and it reminded me of those walks on the beach with the bees and ladybugs washed up on the sand.

Funeral: For Us His Gold
~Alessandra Lynch
                    after Gerald Stern

The insect was yellow with crumpled-black banded legs
          and shellacked back that would outlast us
          and wistful eyes from what I could discern on that trail between
               fields,
and we laid him out in the open air under a sky fast-blue with change,
               wedging
          a leaf beneath his triple-belted belly so he didn’t rest on plain dirt,
          and we placed two cloverblooms by his head and he was old
you said, could tell by how definite the stripes were, how complete
          the patterns bold and dark, almost engraved,
and he was beautiful in that pasture of thirty-three cows and we drank
          milk in the blaring heat and ate the cake you’d made. We were
          the only humans there—unholy-seeming things with two legs,
               dismal histories—
drinking and eating around his elegant husk,
          and from the furze, fellow insects rose, a frenzied static around
               our bodies,
while he remained in situ an unremitting yellow, the color more
          vivid, louder now that he was a remnant. Was color the purpose
               here?
Yellow had alerted us to him, and we took care
          with leaf and clover to make his bed.
The insect’s gold our togetherness, its death from which we fed.