Category Archives: mental health

At the beach, in morning fog

At water’s edge
I plied the sand
for vacant shells
and stones to skip,
so flat.
There,
there was a tree
that had given up,
acute in its angle,
embarrassed at the nakedness of its bleached roots.
Close by,
an eyeless carcass grinned,
in the throes of its last hysterics.

[Image: https://pixabay.com/users/jamesdemers-3416/%5D

Rawhide

Move on, we must.

In boxes and bins,
I carry my proxy love
to the Stow-Away garage.

Outside,
the smirking cat has his wild bones on,
drawing a bead on a tattered squirrel
that curves down a dead-bowed limb.

Night

In the lush bush,
there’s something that laughs.
Treed,
in a frightful dream it lolls,
fetching cheshire smiles.

~Move on~
the blue man says,
and we must.
I must.

But, there is no donkey tail to pin.
I’m blind, as i finger the braille
on this pincushion map.

***

Art work by Theophile Steinlen – Chat au Claire de Lune  (from Pinterest)

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.