Days
The snow falls, daffodils bought last week droop from the mason jar long wilted, dried flowers--from the fall--still stand in another mason jar providing another touch of me in this space as dried bouquets have long intrigued me, the lone orchid stands dying as a reflection of my mood and life as of late, my foot aches in the backdrop, and music no one wants to listen to plays. Sad songs. Moods and memories.
In the shower, I notice a new bruise on my shoulder. I wonder when it came to be, where it came from, and why I didn't see until now. Did I do that in my sleep? Was it someone on a crowded subway? It's the wrong shoulder for my handbag. I wash my hair and forget about it.
Riddled with aches of Lupus and arthritis I do yoga in my studio. I can't make it out for a run, as my post-pneumonia lungs are still reminding me of things of I should not do, and pole dance is planned for Friday. I play mixed songs, of a favorite playlist in the background, and somewhere along the way, I find myself landing on my right foot with more weight than I thought. I hear a pop; I feel a pain. I find ice and go back to grading. A bruise, I can identify, forms. It fades in a few days, and if I'm careful, I can walk just fine in specific shoes. A few days later the pain reminds me of life and loss, as I wake up from a dead sleep wondering what the hell has taken over my right foot. The large toe begins to sing it's own tune, in parallel to the arch. Did I trip? I might have. I don't remember. Was I standing on my toes, in long lost ballerina ways, to see a tall man's eyes or notes in his hand? I think so. I think there was a crack, but I don't remember. Or maybe it was that piroutte I did in class the day before. Did I smack into the podium again? No, I haven't done that one in a while.
Breaking down, in the snow, as the pain leaves me hobbling along like a cripple I venture to an urgent care. An x-ray later I find one broken bone, initially said to be on the wrong toe. In the end, it's not a toe at all. It's the sesamoid bone, and it hurts. Prescription pain pills are involved. A week later praying I'd only sprained my arch--as that's what it always is right?--an Ultrasound shows one ruptured plantar fascia. It knocks me back, in a way. It's all starting to settle in now, after a whiskey last night. I consider, again and again, how much long term steroids have to do with such a volatile injury from such low impact action.
I look on last night and wonder why I didn't have more. Lord knows I didn't have enough to aide in sleep. I didn't have enough to warm the shock, quell the ache, or make me momentarily forget. Instead, one drink later, a 1:30 am attempt to sleep finally settles in, and then I clicked on Pinterest through the wee hours of the night wondering how I got here.
Then again, last night was the bridge to today; that annual day I disappear and try to hide my mental health disparity. It's the day he died, my brother, that is. Last year, the fifteen-year mark, knocked the wind out of me. I wrote a long piece, on Facebook, from my phone that bridge night poetically musing about how a lifetime had passed, books and articles, men and lovers, one divorce, and that my heart still remembered. This year my heart still remembers, and as if the universe was waiting on deck to either comfort or startle me a song I hadn't heard shook me. Crooning about calling a number, that no longer belongs to his dead father. I stop in my tracks, in my kitchen while cooking polenta, and breathe in deep. I remember calling his number, long after he passed.
Once, a couple of years after, I dialed Andy's number and a woman answered. It jolted me awake, as I was half in a dream and woke thinking I owed him a ring. I sat there wrapped in my covers for an elongated moment holding my phone wondering what happened to me. There was another time, a couple of glasses of wine in, I called after someone I spent the better part of twelve years having an off and on again love-hate relationship with ended it with me. In all honesty, that was not wine. It was bourbon. There was so much bourbon that night with no ice as it was a straight up kind of sorrow, and--sadly--it wasn't the last time we ended our tryst. Instead, it hit me the most that night. I still remember that ache. The scar still lives. A man answered Andy's number. I was shocked into momentary half sobriety. On a friend's deck, as I had his house for the summer, the night air--that July--blanketed me and the ship horns in Port Jefferson acted like a musical melody to my melancholy. The next day that man called me back, to see if I was okay, and I apologized (again) telling him he had my brother's old number and in a moment I forgot. He had lost a brother too, and he said he knew that empty pain. We laughed and hung up parting ways. That was the last time I dialed Andy, about five years after he was gone. I've never let that detail out before.
I've long forgotten Andy's old number.
This week I wish I had him around to call and bemoan how much my foot hurts. He'd be an ass, but he'd make me laugh that I am sure. We were good with each other like that. Then again, writing about the past and memory tends to elevate the good and displace the bad. Tonight I sip a slightly bougie version of Woodchuck, as Pearsecco Cider mellows my tastebuds and chords of memory this year. I contemplate adding bourbon into my mix, but instead, I sit here pontificating about the cruel year I'm seeing and memories gone by.
The white shroud fell today, a gentle fall. Wet, drippy snow-covered Gotham, and while I didn't venture out I looked around thinking just as the universe jolted me with that ditty of memory it comforted me with the stark white and sheer cold. Years ago, my Mom told me that snow was God's comfort. She said that as I cried my heart and eyes out at my best friend's funeral; I've always remembered that the snow fell as the service started and Mom commented. Just as I remember that note, I remember him. When Dad put Andy's ashes in the water, it snowed, rained, and hailed. I was the one who got the snow. It was snowing the night he died. The universe certainly has a way of walking with us.
And with that, I tinker at my table, sew a skirt--a pattern long made and done--and sing along to those mellow songs. None of them are ones he loved and sang as we drove I-95 south or around the small town my parents live in, as I can't go there (even now). I grade. I still haven't put away my washed laundry or cleaned off my chair, but I did make the bed. I see a damned spider and turn the back half of my apartment into a toxic waste zone with a can of Raid, while always remembering his penchant for putting spiders in my sock drawer and bed. A friend, with two younger brothers, found that fact hilarious a few weeks back. I tell him he is a boy and would, as I tell him he should expect to peel me off the ceiling and hold me if one appears while he's with me. He laughs, saying I'm "just like a woman."
That I am. Just like a woman. With a heart. With emotions. With memories. Jaded by life. Guarded to the last hours. Protective to my own destruction.
The days evolve, just as they always do. Even in the dark there's a glimmer of hope and light. These days I wonder what that is, more and more, and I struggle to stay ahead of the curve, keep my happy--or at least fake in it in public--and . . . we all go on. One more day. One more run. One more circle around the sun.
In the shower, I notice a new bruise on my shoulder. I wonder when it came to be, where it came from, and why I didn't see until now. Did I do that in my sleep? Was it someone on a crowded subway? It's the wrong shoulder for my handbag. I wash my hair and forget about it.
Riddled with aches of Lupus and arthritis I do yoga in my studio. I can't make it out for a run, as my post-pneumonia lungs are still reminding me of things of I should not do, and pole dance is planned for Friday. I play mixed songs, of a favorite playlist in the background, and somewhere along the way, I find myself landing on my right foot with more weight than I thought. I hear a pop; I feel a pain. I find ice and go back to grading. A bruise, I can identify, forms. It fades in a few days, and if I'm careful, I can walk just fine in specific shoes. A few days later the pain reminds me of life and loss, as I wake up from a dead sleep wondering what the hell has taken over my right foot. The large toe begins to sing it's own tune, in parallel to the arch. Did I trip? I might have. I don't remember. Was I standing on my toes, in long lost ballerina ways, to see a tall man's eyes or notes in his hand? I think so. I think there was a crack, but I don't remember. Or maybe it was that piroutte I did in class the day before. Did I smack into the podium again? No, I haven't done that one in a while.
Breaking down, in the snow, as the pain leaves me hobbling along like a cripple I venture to an urgent care. An x-ray later I find one broken bone, initially said to be on the wrong toe. In the end, it's not a toe at all. It's the sesamoid bone, and it hurts. Prescription pain pills are involved. A week later praying I'd only sprained my arch--as that's what it always is right?--an Ultrasound shows one ruptured plantar fascia. It knocks me back, in a way. It's all starting to settle in now, after a whiskey last night. I consider, again and again, how much long term steroids have to do with such a volatile injury from such low impact action.
I look on last night and wonder why I didn't have more. Lord knows I didn't have enough to aide in sleep. I didn't have enough to warm the shock, quell the ache, or make me momentarily forget. Instead, one drink later, a 1:30 am attempt to sleep finally settles in, and then I clicked on Pinterest through the wee hours of the night wondering how I got here.
Then again, last night was the bridge to today; that annual day I disappear and try to hide my mental health disparity. It's the day he died, my brother, that is. Last year, the fifteen-year mark, knocked the wind out of me. I wrote a long piece, on Facebook, from my phone that bridge night poetically musing about how a lifetime had passed, books and articles, men and lovers, one divorce, and that my heart still remembered. This year my heart still remembers, and as if the universe was waiting on deck to either comfort or startle me a song I hadn't heard shook me. Crooning about calling a number, that no longer belongs to his dead father. I stop in my tracks, in my kitchen while cooking polenta, and breathe in deep. I remember calling his number, long after he passed.
Once, a couple of years after, I dialed Andy's number and a woman answered. It jolted me awake, as I was half in a dream and woke thinking I owed him a ring. I sat there wrapped in my covers for an elongated moment holding my phone wondering what happened to me. There was another time, a couple of glasses of wine in, I called after someone I spent the better part of twelve years having an off and on again love-hate relationship with ended it with me. In all honesty, that was not wine. It was bourbon. There was so much bourbon that night with no ice as it was a straight up kind of sorrow, and--sadly--it wasn't the last time we ended our tryst. Instead, it hit me the most that night. I still remember that ache. The scar still lives. A man answered Andy's number. I was shocked into momentary half sobriety. On a friend's deck, as I had his house for the summer, the night air--that July--blanketed me and the ship horns in Port Jefferson acted like a musical melody to my melancholy. The next day that man called me back, to see if I was okay, and I apologized (again) telling him he had my brother's old number and in a moment I forgot. He had lost a brother too, and he said he knew that empty pain. We laughed and hung up parting ways. That was the last time I dialed Andy, about five years after he was gone. I've never let that detail out before.
I've long forgotten Andy's old number.
This week I wish I had him around to call and bemoan how much my foot hurts. He'd be an ass, but he'd make me laugh that I am sure. We were good with each other like that. Then again, writing about the past and memory tends to elevate the good and displace the bad. Tonight I sip a slightly bougie version of Woodchuck, as Pearsecco Cider mellows my tastebuds and chords of memory this year. I contemplate adding bourbon into my mix, but instead, I sit here pontificating about the cruel year I'm seeing and memories gone by.
The white shroud fell today, a gentle fall. Wet, drippy snow-covered Gotham, and while I didn't venture out I looked around thinking just as the universe jolted me with that ditty of memory it comforted me with the stark white and sheer cold. Years ago, my Mom told me that snow was God's comfort. She said that as I cried my heart and eyes out at my best friend's funeral; I've always remembered that the snow fell as the service started and Mom commented. Just as I remember that note, I remember him. When Dad put Andy's ashes in the water, it snowed, rained, and hailed. I was the one who got the snow. It was snowing the night he died. The universe certainly has a way of walking with us.
And with that, I tinker at my table, sew a skirt--a pattern long made and done--and sing along to those mellow songs. None of them are ones he loved and sang as we drove I-95 south or around the small town my parents live in, as I can't go there (even now). I grade. I still haven't put away my washed laundry or cleaned off my chair, but I did make the bed. I see a damned spider and turn the back half of my apartment into a toxic waste zone with a can of Raid, while always remembering his penchant for putting spiders in my sock drawer and bed. A friend, with two younger brothers, found that fact hilarious a few weeks back. I tell him he is a boy and would, as I tell him he should expect to peel me off the ceiling and hold me if one appears while he's with me. He laughs, saying I'm "just like a woman."
That I am. Just like a woman. With a heart. With emotions. With memories. Jaded by life. Guarded to the last hours. Protective to my own destruction.
The days evolve, just as they always do. Even in the dark there's a glimmer of hope and light. These days I wonder what that is, more and more, and I struggle to stay ahead of the curve, keep my happy--or at least fake in it in public--and . . . we all go on. One more day. One more run. One more circle around the sun.
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