Archangel

Once,
within my hearing,
and thinking himself alone,
he said
I wish I were dead.

And I didn’t man up to that.
I god damn kept my hands in my pockets
and shied away from his tortured road.

And now, in my time of life,
I see to it that things are kept clean,
most especially those hard-to-reach places.

Angels are white-winged, I think,
and brook no negligence of care.

And I don’t know where he is now,
or if he can see my compulsion to shine things.
To bring them to bright.

Or if he knows his boy is just like him.

Everything, and the kitchen sink

* Mental health triggers, suicidal ideation*

God.  You know, I’m just washing dishes, feeling useful and kind of self-satisfied. Haven’t dropped anything or cut myself, even though the bothersome cat is weaving around my legs.  I swear- if he had a ball of yarn, I would have been a coccoon by now.

See, it’s the third week of withdrawal from a particularly nasty medication, and I’m thinking I have aced it.  Not too bad, not too bad.  There’s a cast iron frying pan with some baked-on crusty stuff, and so I run the water very hot and start leaning into it with the old scrub brush.  I’m even thinking that this is good exercise, when the destined vapours rise up to me… the singular smell of fried mushrooms. [Me, at twelve, tagging along with Dad, picking them in fields and ditches, once getting chased by bulls]  [Mom, frying them up in her iron pan, the whole house smelling delightful]

And, God dammit, I cry.  I rattle dishes and run the water faster to help stifle it.  And I think of missed things and squandered chances for love.  And I let this self-pity pool into something worse, and I think what is the freaking point of trying to get clean and well? It’s not as if there are more memories to make, more chances to unsquander my wasted life.

And at last, to myself:  “You’ve made a mistake, bud.  Better go back to the upswing with those meds.” Because I see myself hanging from a tree like those men they found, and I take it to the logical conclusion of worrying about last testaments and burial arrangements.  That’s what it does.  That is what it does.

And so, tomorrow, we find out what we are made of.

 

For sad old earth must borrow its mirth

got good at hiding it,
you think.
but, someone will see you,
and they’ll know.
the things you do
that are just a bit, um,
abby normal.
the way you let your lips get dry
then bite on that thin strip of skin.
pull it off.
taste the bitter blood.
encourage that wonky hangnail.
wait for the right moment to yank.
do the red watercolours
somewhere inconspicuous.
let your pain matriculate,
bone deep.
tell no one of this atonement.
connoisseur of cultivated anguish.

The Difference

Clarice awakes,
but her dream abides.
Don’t be offended when she speaks pleasantries,
or not at all.
What you might hear is only a placeholder
for a short story of ten thousand pages.
She’s seen a distant horizon, but can’t get there.
Knows the true names of our colours,
and how to ask questions of God.
In the saga of her sleep,
charging.  Unresponsive.