Tuesday, July 23, 2013

To Infinity and Beyond




Dear gracious and compassionate One, He who is close to the brokenhearted, You seem to be calling her home. If so, I pray that instead of sorrow, she would know only anticipation. Of the ever after, infinity, glory. A dry place. No tears.
            I hope You stand between her and her earthly love, one great and gentle arm across her shoulder, another around his, drawing them to Yourself. I ask that the air they breathe be You (That near. Be that near to them, please.). Exhale a soft breath, a halo both warm and cool, above their heads. 
            And maybe if you would, give her, perhaps even him, when their faces are side by side, ears to hear the things on high, the sounds only immortals are privvy to: living waterfalls, choirs of millions, wingbeats of seraphim. “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come.”
            In addition, would you also please prepare a spacious place for her at your feet, in your throne room where I imagine (desire, really) your floorcovering is by morning a sunrise and by evening a sunset? Some day, and it may be years from now, (and if it is, we will praise Your name even as we laugh and call her Hezekiah), she’ll wind one ethereal arm around the essence of You on her left, then lay one elegant hand on one of your Son’s piercings on her right. A moment later, out of habit, her slender fingers will relocate to the space in front of her ribs. Glide and tap, together and apart, and though there is no keyboard, there will be a song, a gorgeous melody.


(She doesn’t know me but this is my prayer for her.)

Friday, July 12, 2013

The Rest of the Story



The second-floor room was not only packed, it was also stuffy despite the droning efforts of a small I-think-I-can-I-think-I-can window air conditioner. Knowing anything could happen at a public open mic event—dreadful poems about cats or pizza, 5,000 words delivered in a monotone—I considered the exit.
            My friend beside me rested her hand on my thigh. “I brought something to read. Please stay.” I smiled and relaxed my grip on the soft, bright sweater in my lap.
            When the first reader centered his girth behind the podium, my mouth hitched to one side. He usually goes last, I thought. I braced myself.
            He said he’d be reading a poem. It wasn't poetry. It was porn. After the first few words, I squeezed my eyes shut, hugged my ribs. A few more syllables and I began to hum ever so softly, twined my legs and leaned forward and back in tiny increments, didn’t stop.
I opened my eyes when I sensed motion nearby. My friend stood and headed for the hall. “Take me with you,” I told her but she didn’t hear. My scream was silent.
Through narrowed eyes, I studied my right foot,  meditated on its crushed-twenty-years-ago sesamoid bone and how the pain had flared recently. I imagined myself walking without shoes, without the custom orthotic that guarantees freedom from pain. Barefoot, my arch tries to make a fist with muscles and tissue someone seems to have scraped with a vegetable peeler.  Pondering pain, I decided, is preferable to hearing hurl.
The moment my mind brought up vomit, I recalled the stench of grade-school spew, the kind that on one level smells like cheese. I pictured a teacher summoning a janitor. When he entered the room, he’d locate the splat then dip his hand inside the sack he'd brought. He'd lift out a mound  of evergreen-colored crumbles and with his fingers splayed slightly he’d shake his hand over the mess on the desktop or floor. The absorb-the-barf bits would rain onto the wet, and shortly after, the room would reek of minty cheese, like if you ate pizza then chewed spearmint gum. As much as I love peppermint, I hate spearmint. It makes me seasick. I think. I’ve never been on a cruise.
~~~~~~
I had trouble sleeping the night of the reading. The morning after, I slipped into obsession mode.
“Why did last night rattle me so? Why didn’t I just leave?” I asked myself those things over and over. “Like my friend did. I sat in the back not far from the door. It would’ve been easy.”
At the kitchen table, I stirred my cappuccino to incorporate the steamed milk into the espresso. I like all of the beverage to be foamy, not just the top layer.
“I'll tell you why I didn’t move.” My words sounded loud, sharp. “Every body part weighed two tons. No way I could move.”
I relocated to the linoleum, my back against the snack cabinet door. Both my bunnies approached. I cringed as all 32 of their one-inch nails assaulted my thighs.
“Am I talking in my I-have-a-treat-for-you voice?” I asked. “Sorry, I don’t.” Again and again I slid their silken ears through my fingers.
“I was like Bambi in the headlights, " I told Domino and Coal Pepper, "or rather his girlfriend, Faline.  Like a doe in the road when her eyes glow in the dark and she won’t, can’t, budge. Instead she’s stuck stiff-legged in the purgatory between fight and flight. Motionless. Freaked. Incapabable of doing the one thing that’d save her.” I sighed. “That was me. Me was she.”
Domino climbed my shirt front to get at my face. Licked the salt  she found there.
~~~~~~
Later that day I sat cross-legged on the sofa in the living room, journal open on my lap.
“I wish so much I’d left," I told the golden walls.  "I thought I was all better, healed. Am I not? Why didn’t I leave?”
Those words—why didn’t I—they’re not four letter words but they could be. Blame isn’t a curse word but it ought to be. When the finger that’s pointing at you is your own, it’s so much sharper than someone else's. Freddy Krueger sharp.
         In that moment I made a decision, closed my notebook with a snap. A minute later I opened it again and began to write.


“I’m done being oblique, finished alluding to the rest of the story.
I am a sexual abuse survivor. All my life I’ve felt like a freak for it,
like the child left in the center of the circle at the end of a game
of Farmer in the Dell. I’m not alone. Statistics say at least 1 in 5
women have been sexually abused. Count the women around you—
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.  Don’t think for a second the eyes of the
wounded ones will glow. They don't always. I can
sometimes spot them, but most of the time their Suzy Sunshine
Syndrome runs way too deep, be it nature or nurture. More often
than not, their competent  functioning misleads.”


        I shut my journal and leaned forward to collect my phone off the cocktail table. Tapped a message to my writer gal pal: If that ever happens again, take me with you when  you leave. I poke the SEND key with a metallic fingernail.
“She’ll know what I’m talking about,” I said, “’cause she’s a Suzy Sunshine too. "

Monday, July 1, 2013

BRB





Guess what? 
I'm taking a blogging break. To do stuff. 
Like what? Like:
To work on a group project. 
To refuel. 
To seek and find the mother lode of inspiration. 
To get an MFA in creative writing. 
To love my family with all my heart. 
Stuff like that. 

Check back now and again. 
I might start suddenly producing stuff at a frantic pace. 
That would be cool. 

Grace and peace~

dt

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