Bread and Bandages
Pharmaceutical-grade passion
Have to make more doctor's appointments, find new counselors, pay off any open refills on meds before it's too late and all expire. Need groceries too. My head my foot and the vacuum of a body in between. These are things I think on clonazepam. This is the way I write on clonazepam. And I have just enough grumpled energy from somewhere beneath the powdery yellow-wash of pill to remember resenting this. To remember this is how I get on clonazepam, all resigned and powdery and vague, and I don't like it. Don't like being this way one bit. Then the next wave of pharmaceutical restraint masquerading as patience and calm sweeps back over me. It's a struggle to be ruffled up on meds. Something falls making a creepy slipping noise but I just stare around blandly, not even really trying to locate it, until my eyes fall on a heavy book sagging against the sofa where it just fell open. Muted everything. Stubbornness can be a kind of passion.
I Have Wanted Out Of It Before Now
I have wanted J. for two and a half years. It was a full year before I could even acknowledge this to him, another nine months before I could do anything with him and I made him wait two months before agreeing to a committed relationship. I am finally in the relationship I have spent nearly three years trying to get into, with someone I have cared about and wanted and totally respected and been breathtakingly turned on by for years and I am not going to throw out all of that because completely unknown to either of us some girl decides she has to have his baby, no matter what it takes. This is a relationship I have spent hundreds of days groping my way into and I am not backing out of it now.
I Am Afraid to Go Wrong
I am afraid I might be turning happy. I am well-fed, well-sheltered, well-clothed, well-fucked. I need things to wish for, things to make myself desperate miserable for before my imagination starts hibernating. Things are just going too well for something not to go wrong. Okay, there was the thing with J. and Taz, but something worse than that, something bigger. Perhaps J. will lose interest in me soon, now that I am growing used to thinking of him. I maybe should not have written him that letter, not sent it at least. I need things wrong before I curl up in a cozy little ball of fuzzy green contentment, something has to go wrong.
Sometimes Waking Up Alone
Some time ago I told J. about my Grandma calling me Shana Madela. He calls me that sometimes, when we are close....or says it rather, the way you might say 'honey' or 'darling' if it was actually someone's name. And I think things like that come more naturally from females but I love hearing him say my name like that. It sounds like a kiss along my spine. I always thought it was something only she would say, as though when I died I would hear her saying that but never in between. It sounds natural in his mouth though. Sometimes I wish I could fall asleep with him but I always imagine myself waking up alone.
My Body Is Lonely for Nobody
My body is lonely for yours and I am afraid of feeling things too strongly. Where are you and why don't you call? And why am I waiting for you? I miss you standing in the kitchen doorway and stirring a dirty pot of macaroni. Thumbing through a week-old paper that has lain on the dining room table for days. There are too many rooms for just me and I want to go out and am afraid of missing your call. Why does nobody call?
Undifferentiated Space
The apartment is too large just for me. Ants and scorpions and walled voices fill the empty spaces, the extra corners my body cannot curl into, I sometimes let them stay. There is never enough of me to go around. I am not well. I have the urge to burn my arm and smear ashes over the walls. To cut my thighs and fill the ceiling with blood. To make an impression. Suicide is always around the corner, under the page, the extra pencil lead. There are four rooms and two closets too many. I will eat some more bread and go to work; I will feel better. I am crumbling at the corners. Bits of me will dust-sift the page. How long will this continue?
