Recovery, Jazz and Other Winding Roads

 
Hi, my name is Maureen and I am addicted to my sadness.

The first step to recovery is admitting that you have a problem
with this neck-deep muck and mire;
Dire hand like quicksand
(such slow but steady sinking)
wrapped around my throat.

Step two:

“Hope is the thing with feathers”,
Yet tethered to eternity
clings distrust,
wings weathered from
what could have been,
but never was now lost.

Step three is my neck cocked to the side
gut-wrenching
with holey wrists hung to bear my
torture stake:
“Father into your hands, I entrust my spirit.”

I have had the wind shot up my spine
and clear out my body
trying to climb step four,
trying to third world war myself dead in the mirror--
demons dancing circles around my reflection,
rejection and all.

Step five is
my blood spilled upon this page
and me begging your forgiveness

I stay stuck, back-bucked-body-doubled
on the likes of number six.
I mean what does that even mean?
To be ready to change?
To say "I will feel this joy if it kills me
in its making"?

Step seven is not your
run-of-the-mill Hail Mary
Is not "Our father which art in heaven
hallowed be thy name..."
It is my nose to the dirt
a sweat and snot elixir
staining the ground inches beneath my face
praying 'God don't break my beat-down soul.'

Step Eight ways to say I'm sorry:
I'm sorry for being here
and not really being here.

I am sorry I let you down again.
I am sorry I didn't pick up the phone.
I am sorry my quiet is so obnoxiously loud.
I am sorry my sadness is shaped like pride.
I am sorry that sorry is never enough.

Step nine is my finger on the trigger
aimed directly at his heart,
shooting bullets made of candy kisses
until he lets me in.

There is no step ten,
but rather an up-hill of patched ice
and misunderstanding.
Though the slope seems steep,
keep my eyes at my feet
and toward infinity may my aching arm ever reach.

When life hands you lemons,
eleven will not make the lemonade,
but will shift your focus from that closest
sour pulp sadness
to the raw sugar that is in the honey and the trees and
that one jazz standard that makes
puckered and sunk-in cheeks
seem sweeter.

And step twelve?
Twelve is you closing this page

and hoping you can still hear me.

ABOUT: I wrote this years ago, but was talking recently with a friend about how difficult it is to accept that you have a mental illness. Largely because our society as a whole has for so long put a stigma on any kind of condition that doesn't have visible symptoms. Please know you are not alone.

Nocturne

No one questioned the wolf’s alternatives

(if there was any other way

For a wolf to be born).

It is too easy to look at its glaring grin, 

Feel the edge of its howl cutting into your bone

And prefer it dead over living.

No one said to the wolf

“Here, take this soft fuzz

Take these Big, bug-round eyes

Take these dulled and docile teeth,

I grant you the un-alarming geste 

Of a rabbit.”

I was bomb

Catapult with violence 

into an immense and darkening night.

It was not calm I was gifted, but

Claws— that I may fight my way out this night.

I was given teeth

And a loud song.

My eyes were never meant to be a warning;

When you see two rays emanating golden in the black,

Please know I, too, was born in fear of this dark.

But I can see now.

I thank Jehovah God 

for this sight.

about//  the survival tactics of a wolf.