Up. Right.

Minutes. 

Hours, maybe.

I get to choose how long I remain upright in the world.

I get to choose where I spend my spoons, today.

Walk a block, or stand and deliver.

Lift my silly little nephew out of his seat, or sit in the theatre: not both.

I get to choose, now.  I get to pace myself and measure my steps.

Measuring life from one painkiller to another.  

I used to mark my life from one show to the next. 

Now it's from one pill to the next, one treatment to the next.

I know it happens to everyone.  I'm grateful it isn't something more terrifying yet.

I guess I thought I would have had a little more time upright.

I get to choose now, whether to grieve all the things I don't get to do anymore, 

Or celebrate the things I did and cherish every single moment that I get now.

I love how slow my world has become.  I get to live with so much more intention now.

I can't blindly say 'yes' to everything anymore now, so given the choice:

I'll measure my life in love. 

A Litany for Pain.

Is fear the thing that becomes the mind-killer?

Or is it Pain?

For whose little death truly brings total annihilation?

Pain becomes that pinpoint focus, 

And that mad abandon in search of some relief

It becomes everything and nothing and the space in-between.

I am focused on only breathing, and beating my wings against this flood.

Oh god, how it floods.

Pain is brilliant, and dwelling and insistent and enveloping

It is controlling and encompassing and devouring.

I will open my arms to Pain.  I will watch its path as it burns

Every part of me I am not sure of.

It reduces the best and the worst and the uncertainties 

Down to only what matters most:

Love.

Hope.

I will open my soul to Pain as it washes me clean of any trappings of desire.

Anything I wanted that doesn't serve me, 

Anything I am that isn't sure or whole or perfect gets burned down to its core.

"And where Pain has gone, there will be nothing."

Only Love will remain.

Go home.

Insidious, disastrous.

Catastophrous, even.

Brilliant and humbling, I grasp at straws, at my own breath

Gasping for some kind of relief.

It's not that the pain is sharp or really even all that intense

It is the relentlessness that wears me down.

It's a long-flowing stream of water that wears away rock.

It's a ceaseless wind drifting the sand ever so smoothly.

Slowly it chips away at my soul, at my body, at my life.

I am discouraged.  I am losing hope in a way I never have before.

Aging faster than I ever dreamed.

I am learning to lean hard.  Lay down and lean in.  

Listen to my body when it says no.

Maybe it's all a farce, you see.  My body screaming the quiet part out loud...

Go home.

Current

 Waiting so long to finally find it.

Putting one foot in front of the other only gets me so far.

I have these two little feet and they

Just can't go all that much further.

I'm getting better, but not.

Healing slowly, but not.

What's great about this weight is it's easily shed, this time.

Not gathered so tight about my ankles to drag me down.

It's time, darlin.  Oh, it's this time.  

There's now, and there's never, and there's lots of things in-between.

Lots of songs left to sing, lots of stories left to write.

Lots of lazy days in the sun.

For now, though.  And maybe forever... 

I gotta keep putting one foot in front of the other.

Keep peeling off the barnacles that the shifting seas laid down for me.

I might have laid down for you, if you'd give it back.

These little wind currents keep blowing, my dear.  They keep time with the seasons, the ice and the flow.

I'm afraid this time, that they're blowing me home.

Been waiting too long for the train that just ain't coming 

So, maybe I'll start finding my own way, alone.

Not mine.

Wallowing in grief that isn't mine.

I pick handfuls of diamonds and mud up, to feel them slide through my hair.

Someone else's tears and sorrow adorn my cloak and crown.

Heroes don't take mud-baths.

It drips, draining me of sense and absolving me of all my sins.

Muck that fills my lungs and falls from the corners of my mouth, 

Like blood.

Clotted blood, and this smell of iron and thick death.

I pick my teeth with its ribs.

Tiny sticks to bury, nothing more.

I grieve things that aren't mine to grieve.

I'll vomit up someone else's tragedy, hang it loosely from the rafters

Like some macrame lace.  

Puke lace.

If I hold it all in my hands again, clotted mud and sticks

If I grind it in my matted hair

Wipe it through my stinging eyes, and press it in my fragile skin, 

Will it go away, then?

Will the smell go away?

I want to snip my skin into ribbons.

I want the sky to breathe me in, 

My house should be wider than the desert...  This isn't mine.

This isn't mine.

Snip snip

 

I want to snip my skin into ribbons.

I want to feed on bones

I want the air to become me

My house should be wider than the desert.

Dreams and shifting sands of sleep

Weigh heavy on my eyes and weeping shoulder wounds.

Sand, and flesh and bones and skin

Ribs for toothpicks,

Dreams for babies 

And children

And crones.

I want to snip the air into the thousand crumbling salts it falls in

I want their ribbons in my hair

Bone ribbons

Salt ribbons

Flesh ribbons winding through us all

I want dreams that aren’t sticky

I want to breathe unsalty air

I want a home that I fit in.

I want.  I always want.

See-through

Want out, yet?

Did you find it- what you were looking for?

I found a drifting isolation, tonight

Found the validation I was hoping to find

And some comfort, too.

I’ll fake it in any way I can get it- you should try it sometime. 

It feels like love, most of the time.

Promised I woudnt have any more conversations

With ghosts.

The thing about ghosts is: 

Most times, they never really even showed up in the first place.

I know you’re here, some kinda specter, too.

Not a creep: that implies disgust, on my part.

No, you’re here out of a wraith’s confusion

Hoping to find some sliver of connection

Wandering the open sky looking to find

Some ounce of the way I used to make you feel;

Home.

Worthwhile.

Listened to.

Important.

Wanted…

Fact is: 

I was always just a ghost, myself.

You just never bothered to see through me

At all.