Today I forgot the word for widow. I visited all the neighboring words: late, former, forgotten, leftover, left behind. I gripped my hands to each other, and opened them, over and over. As if the word could be found there. As if a synonym for widow is the moment when two held hands unclutch from each other. Today I stood outside my apartment and tried … Continue reading 17. plans
My mind remembers how it loves the sun, but it plays the game of telephone when it talks to my body now. My mind says desert,my arms hear dizzy. My mind says orchid, my neck hears burn. My mind says lizardand my body hears melt, melt,melt. And the body wins, the body wears. On hot days like this,the space between my body and mind is … Continue reading aphasia residue
(Title after a poem by James Wright, “Today I Was Happy So I Made This Poem”) Today I was happy so I ran a brush through my hair one hundred times. The grip of the comb a gratitude itself, look how I clutch, look how I hold, look how I care for myself. Today I was happy so I gathered one hundred children and told … Continue reading Today I was happy, so I made this post.
My hair is long enough now that it can hold itself up if I tie it right. Before tiny clots slipped into my brain and dented the hardware, this would have been impossible, length or no. My hair was slippery soft then, resistant to anything that wasn’t a beeline freefall. I could coil the strands around a silently burning cylinder and, for a second, the … Continue reading swish
On the coast, the fog crashes through like kaiju, disappearing trees and buildings with a single blow. The dense and guttural cries inspire my joints to take their place in the chorus, creaking and groaning, too. My body, my city, is a monster movie before the destruction, during the destruction, after the destruction. We call the after the rebuilding, and the before the good ol … Continue reading cauliflower seashells
The last few days have been very good days for me, and I find myself so charmed by the possibility that this could be every day, or most days, that I just want to shout HAPPY from around a mouthful of toast. Thank you, Universe. You’re doing a good job. Some from the laundry list of reasons: My current stage of neurotherapy tests have become … Continue reading happy
There’s this thing people say sometimes when I write about my brain recovery that hops around my mind these days. They say it has given them context for people in their own lives climbing similar barriers. I think about this often because I am writing these experiences out for me, and my doctors, as selfishly as possible. The last few days have been a blur … Continue reading sittin’ with it
I’m pretty sure my to do list is an ever-expanding universe gathering dust and making stars from it. It’s an endless caterpillar that grows legs faster than they fall off. It’s a black hole I throw my time into like a carnival game addict, just fifteen minutes for a toss. I’ve been scowling at it for ten minutes now and nothing has changed about its … Continue reading Between Math and a WhoDunIt
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