superficial

My bf says everything irritates me, but I don’t know how to explain that being in my brain irritates me. I say I’m working on it, but the truth is it’s a never ending movie. I’m always moving- new space, new things to unpack. Pack it all back up- Move to another space just to unpack it all again. Find a new place for every item to go, every single experience, every shred of trauma. Hiding in a shell of my very existence. Look at how nice I decorated- my trauma on display to be judged, never admired. I got sexual abuse in this corner and domestic violence on the wall down the hall. Please applaud- as my past is never on display just to be admired. Only judged. And the biggest critic of all is the one inside my brain. Irritated by everything, and shamed of it all.

An Ode to C-PTSD by me

I wrote this after feeling a lot of shame and anxiety in my bf’s car yesterday. I had quit drinking alcohol 22 days ago. My bf struggles to understand repetitive abuse as he came from the richest neighborhood in our state. He didn’t know what it was like to be unhoused or physically beaten by your family and at times he finds it hard to understand why I put myself in so much chaos that harms me. Working on my story will never end- it will always present new challenges that I must work through and that is what I dedicate this piece to. Understanding that my inner critic has engulfed me in shame and I will always need to unpack what I’m dealing with in new situations.

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soracities

a-quiet-green-agreement

She was tired a lot, as if she was living not one life but two: her own, and another, shadowy life that hovered around her and would not let itself be realized—

– Margaret Atwood, from “Death by Landscape,” Wilderness Tips: Stories (Anchor Books, 1998)

soracities

eaux-fortes

“How can so many things become a bore by middle age — philosophy, radicalism, and other fast foods — but heartbreak keeps its sting?”

— Andrew Sean Greer, Less

soracities

"Hope: the following page. Do not close the book." "I have turned all the pages of the book without finding hope." "Perhaps hope is the book."

Edmond Jabès from "Drawn Curtains" (Return to the Book), excerpted in From the Book to the Book: An Edmond Jabès Reader [transcript in ALT]

lifeinpoetry

The sky is too high
And I want to feel crushed.

— Elisa Gabbert, from "The Vagueness of the Moment," Normal Distance

soracities

“The cool bowl of her body is made for my palm. The curved cup of my hand her safe harbor. Her green is my green, my longing, my undying, her hollowed out center my own.”

— Robin Turner, “The Green Glass Swan,” Amethyst Review (17 March 2023)