etcetera, etcetera

christmas. telephone. pipe bomb.  you learned to play with nonsense words instead of the sharp reality of pain when you were five years old: spinning icicle, bubble gum,  and puppy dog through the fires glowing in your head. ribbons of vocabulary at a bonfire dance. one hollow needle in a plural space, and the words  marching band and inquiry  explode behind tiny eyelids. the days pass in scalpels, feeding tubes, and books carefully selected from the pediatrics ward library. you are a grown up now; something you never imagined would happen. you've somehow made it here with more and less words than you've ever had. a scarred vein ripping turns ' agony ' from a sharp gasp to ' bonfire, gargantuan, loquacious .' someone in the room is screaming. it might be you. the suction tube snakes writhe down your throat, putting your little game to the test. RedLightCOOKING chickensBOOKS, WORDSBOOKS.  three pages into the mental thesaurus and your throat is inflamed....

"i'm falling through the doors of the emergency room, can anybody help me with these exit wounds? i don't know how much more love this heart can lose, and i'm dying, dying from these exit wounds." once, in a world that no longer exists, i got on an airplane with this song dancing on the tip of my tongue. to my right sat nanny, anxious as always, clutching her carry on like the crown jewels. i stared out the window beside her, trying to commit the city of philadelphia to memory as it melted into pooling darkness. it occurred to me that one day i might want to remember what it looked like to be leaving this country, the lights of a city i've never seen fading over a darkened ocean.  young & sixteen, i had no way of knowing how true that would one day be; no way of knowing that the notre dame had just seven years left to remember it's past, before the same fire burning in the heart of a young traveler would ignite some of the oldest beauty left standing...

when i was in first grade, you came to florida on vacation.  chris and danielle sat in front of a glowing television as you sat on my parents' sofa, donna bustling in the kitchen with my mother. it was just two short years after my health problems began slowly emerging, and i remember feeling the dread of being sun sick and nauseous; too anxious to tell my mom, lest another trip to the hospital befall me at a time like this. i made it through the restaurant hours prior; brushing the itch out of my clothes after chris poured sand down the back of my dress.  i was never interesting for the right reasons. but i can't miss it. i won't miss it. i can't let it get so bad that i miss it.  in the glow of our living room, i feel closer than ever to being interesting enough. i've worked hard to take up this space. (my mom's voice, whispering: "one day, when you're older, they'll be glad to be your friend. kids aren't always kind. it's okay. i...

tell me you’re as scared as i am. tell me you feel lost, no matter what’s unfolding before you. look into my eyes and describe what pulls you under when the waves are vicious. what fills your lungs and leaves you gasping for air? what drags you out to sea screaming, water gurgling in your desperate lungs? give me the blood soaked towels and those awful, yellowed sweatbands.  give me the flu and two hot baths in a single night. the pain of your youth circles the drain, so i wash it down with cold water. i want to drive at 3 o’clock in the morning when i have work in four hours. i want sobbing. drums. raw voices on the radio, and the kind of pain you can’t edit away. i want every word you have to give me, even when they don’t mean what you think they do. i'm already so good at reading between your lines. i used to hear about beautiful houses washed from sandy coastlines that were eroding long before they were built, and think their owners foolish for believing that beauty was as ...

a year in review from the journal archives: — “when you were in pre-k, nanny sent you off to school with brand new, bright pink boots and instructions to ‘kick that little shit, conrad, right in the shin’ with them if he were ever so bold as to bully me again.  from you, i learned to be the fire instead of just starting one.”

the voice after the tone sounds as if it hasn't spoken words it understands in a very long time. "h-hello? hello. i - gosh, nancy? is this you? i hope you've kept the same number, but it sure has been awhile. this is mark.. maria's husband. i was just.. well. i'm calling because.. i mean, of all people, you should know. it's.. she.. AHEM. maria has passed away. it was alzheimer's disease. dementia. i'm sorry. i hope this finds you well. i'm sorry." *click* apparently mark was never particularly good with words. not a thing like maria, who taught my grandmother how to fold and starch clothes in the basement of woolworth's department store. nanny's first week as a working woman was saved by her new friend's endless advice, her easy laughter, and her affinity for american hamburgers; a delicacy she had never seen in puerto rico. nanny found this endlessly amusing, mostly because she couldn't imagine having the money to orde...

this morning i opened an old journal i’m trying to fill, and found a blurb i wrote to nanny in the winter of 2017. it was penned just two short months after i made the decision to move home and be her caregiver. i had no way of knowing just how much pain would be tied to these words. today, i’m reading them all all again on my partner’s back porch, 874 miles away from my grandmother, because these past two years have had a lot to teach me. the tear smudged words that muddy the pages are still as true as they’ve ever been — but in the time that’s passed since i wrote them, it’s been harder than i imagined to keep up with both my promises and myself.  2017 was for idealism + cock-eyed optimism; a setup for 2018 to come and wrecked me deeply. facing lessons about burnout in real time taught me that if i want to take care of anybody, i have to take better care of myself. empty pitchers can’t fill up any cups, so i learned how to make my own peace. and when i “faile...