Triptych of a fragile thing
a poem of sorts
I. The birth of a ghost
The way I should have been born: some other way, or not at all.
My mother tells me I am miraculous. I have always felt like someone standing on a street corner. Lost. Aching. Arms on backwards. In a strange city. On strange ground. Something less than alive, but not quite dead. What do you call this place, this landscape filled with apparitions? What do you call hands that cannot hold onto anything? What do you call living without wanting it? What do you call a ghost that is still breathing?
I spend a year trying to find the answer. On unsteady feet, like a newly born animal. Still wet with after-effects. Scream caught in the throat. Still curled in the shape of an unborn thing. Always getting caught on a plea to go back. Please, if you're up there, take me back.
I talk to the sky, but I believe in nothing except an old, perpetual thing wedged between the ribs.
II. The old, perpetual thing between the ribs
I am always apologizing for the most transparent parts of myself.
Sick in the head since the head was grown.
Sick to the bone. Sick to the milk teeth. Sick to the fabric. Sick to the stitches. Sick sick sick.
It takes a certain kind of resignation. Something may be sleeping in a tender place but you know it, in your palms in the base of your neck in the crooks of your knees in the sockets of your shoulders you know it is never over.
If it was ever to be over you’d have to do something drastic, out of sheer shock.
I cannot remember the last time I was not tethered to something else. It sleeps in a fractured, sore place, and you take a deep breath in the winter but there is a knowing, in all these sockets, that this is it. This is as good as it will get. It’s a necessary cynicism, and barely, at that. This is as good as it will get until this is as bad as it will get. And. And. And.
I am always making a last stand.
III. The last stand
What do you call a deep breath in the winter? I call it as-close-as-I’ll-ever-get. What do you call splinters set deep into knuckles? What do you call woman split down the middle? What do you call the moments it stops, when the plea crawls back down your throat, when the please god take me back curls up and goes to sleep in its place?
I call it home, or I try to.
“You cannot disown what is yours. Flung out, there is always the return, the reckoning, the revenge, perhaps the reconciliation. There is always the return. And the wound will take you there.” — Jeanette Winterson
That’s all for now, take care of yourself
This was so beautiful! I had goosebumps reading this.
i need to get this tattooed