On Coming to Terms with Chronic Illness: Keys
Once she knew a boy who collected spare keys and strung them on a cable.
He never tried to unlock anything–as far as she knew. But he liked the weight
of them. Hundreds. He could hardly lift them. He liked their different shapes.
She liked that each key carried a secret story. She does not, however, like junk
drawers, stuffed with bent paper clips, leaky batteries, dried pens, plastic forks,
yellowed recipes. Rotting rubber bands. A single, gummy key. She wants every
thing in its place. Everything found and clean. Once, she had a rabbit–big, white,
bossy, with pink eyes–who lined up her wooden toys, parallel and evenly spaced.
Now, near her house, people live in tents along the creek. Some sweep their dirt
stoops. Most have shopping carts full of damp newspapers, broken toys, blenders
with no cords, take-out containers, art in cracked frames. They adopt stray dogs.
Her mother was a stray, with no family, forever moving to a new cities, hauling
her heavy purse, but leaving the rest behind. Friends. Furniture. Photographs.
Keys. It frightened her how easily her mother forgot the past. She traveled light,
but her brain was a storage unit of stories and pain. The girl kept scrapbooks,
proof that she had once belonged to a time and place. Proof she owned a story.
Now, she has lived a long time in one place. She tries to keep her life spare. She
no longer keeps scrapbooks. She uses an electronic key. She fears she no longer
has a story. She tries to keep her life spare, but she’s still a tourist of excess:
She likes seeing intricate cathedrals, graffitied walls, elaborate back tattoos.
Her dreams are complicated. She is running late. She has lost her bags. Her keys.
She can’t find her way through the corridors of city streets. Airports. Shopping
Malls. Hotels. High schools. She is driving too fast. Her steering wheel is loose.
People’s faces are always changing. She wishes she were a rabbit with toys tidy
and parallel. But now the knots and networks of her body no longer know how
to speak to each other. They have lost the keys to each other’s houses. They have
forgotten their shared story. But this is the body she has. She doesn’t have a spare.
Coming to Terms with Chronic Illness: LIES
We are on the edge of the New Age. You
will no longer be ruled by your losses
or pain. You will substitute applesauce
for vegetable oil and the brownies will
taste just as good. You will be exquisitely
fashionable. You will be brave in the face
of death. Your feet will stop growing their
new wrinkles and veins. Your feelings will
never be hurt again. You will knit your own
sweaters with wool from the lamb you nursed
with a baby bottle. You will remember
what matters: land and animals and love
and making things with your hands. You
will write long letters. You will not nest
with throw pillows, heating pads, and hot
baths: you will travel with your lean muscles
and a backpack. You will sleep on rocks under
stars. The sky will be in your chest. You will be
boundless and ageless. You will get love-drunk
and run the streets of far-away cities, whooping
and hollering–your heart, big and loose. You will
remember everyone’s story. You will embrace
your bare and mottled face. You will not be afraid.
You will carve a snow cave and confess your sloppy
love. You will get better every day. You will teach
children what is most important. Yoga will fix
everything. You will see all things clearly.
Coming to Terms with Chronic Illness: Electricity
I visited the exhibit of an artist who had developed an allergy
to electricity and paint and all his dyes. Now, he works
by candlelight and weaves colorless fabrics large as walls.
Electricity is a mystery to me. It sparks our cars, brights
our lights, beats our hearts, flashes news along our nerves,
translates will to action. (All winter, my husband is shocked
by door handles, shopping cart handles, my nose, my lips.
His kiss is a star between us.) In the 1800s, doctors believed
mental illness was a disease of the nerves: they prescribed
the rest cure, rich foods, and dangerous medicines that
didn’t work. As I child, I thought the song lyric “Here
comes your 19th nervous breakdown” was about my mother.
She prescribed herself the rest cure, which looked, to me,
a lot like depression: so many months lost to dark rooms,
cold coffee, cigarette butts. Rest wasn’t cure, but symptom.
Me? I’d outwit, outsprint lethargy with my will. I did.
Until this illness made the sheaves around my nerves
feel stripped. I wish I could spread my nerves like a net
across the bed for a nap, pause leaps across synaptic
gaps. Has my electricity gone askew? Or are there potholes
in my paths? Doctors wrote “anxiety” in their notes
(tut-tutted the sensitive imagination, recommended
meditation) until I finally had a diagnosis; even so,
they can’t explain why self-electrocution is a symptom.
Nervous breakdowns are out of fashion. Anxiety
is trending. Bedrotting as a cure is popular on Tik Tok.
Doctors prescribed dangerous medications that didn’t work,
Only rest helps. And movement. In some delicately
textured, ever-changing weave no expert can prescribe.
I must pay attention to my signals. But not too much
–or my hissing nerves will drive me frantic. I try to meditate.
I’m learning a new art. I must feel my way by candlelight.
Coming to Terms with Chronic Illness: Fatigue in December
The moon is a button made of bone
that closes the great black cloak
of winter. I move in slow motion.
I harness myself to an engine
which drags me where I have to go.
The elbows of my soul have road rash.
I am the opposite of a drag queen:
I remove makeup, tangle my hair,
and pull on plaid pajama bottoms
with ragged hems. I want snowfall
and flannel sheets. I want to curl
in the pocket of that great black cloak
with its moon-button made of bone.
I hereby resign from my lifetime
appointment as lighthouse keeper.
I am not exhausted by the storms
–or the saving–but by the watching
and waiting.
Coming to Terms with Chronic Illness: the Junkyard
The things in the junkyard rarely wake
before noon. Sheet metal, carburetors,
car seat springs and kerosene tins. The
things in the junkyard have forgotten
you. Their memories have rusted. They don’t
apologize for disappointing you or for too
short lives. The things in the junkyard want
only for hands so they can soothe the rangy
yard dog, whose voice strains with longing
and grief. The things in the junkyard have
no ceiling. They hunker in dirt under stars
and storms. Their thin and broken bits flap
in the wind. All their light bulbs are broken.
But listen: Hear them whisper. They murmur
about that slow, big-eyed cow who, just this
moment, stares greedily over the junkyard
fence, as if her sweet grass is not enough.
Coming to Terms with Chronic Illness: Little Mice
Just before my marriage ended,
a student asked me to keep
her pet mouse. I couldn’t say no–
her heart and needs were so big.
We named him Martín Snowplow
after the way he burrowed through
his white bedding. He was light gray
with big black eyes and a musk
so strong, our eyes stung.
My husband stayed away til late.
I prepared lessons at my desk.
I was always cold and pulled
an oversized robe over my clothes.
Martín ran the inside of my sleeves,
tickled my neck, and nudged
his nose out my collar–until he peed
and I had to wash my clothes again.
Martín and I moved to a second floor
studio apartment with a red desk
and a window that opened on a creek.
Some nights, I’d lie on my back,
put Martín on my foot and watch him
sprint my body length: his serious,
driven, funny face growing bigger
and bigger til he reached my chin.
Mostly though, stunned by grief
and change, I never did give Martín
the freedom and attention he deserved.
In Latin, the word for muscles
is “musculous,” little mice,
for the animal-way a muscle
moves under the skin. For years,
I worked my muscles hard.
They were uncomplaining
miracles of balance and strength
–even when I didn’t feed them,
water them, understand they needed
rest. Then, that year in the studio
with the red desk that faced the creek,
those first strange happenings:
a tightening in the hip, a frozen arm
and hand, tingles that ran up and down
my limbs, like the prick of Martín’s feet.
I didn’t notice quick enough
that Martín had fleas in his fur
and a lump on his side. Two years,
that’s about as long as a mouse lives,
someone said. You gave him food
and toys and a little straw house.
You did what you could.
Better care may not have saved him;
I wish I’d cared for him better anyway.
Later, I’d learned my muscles were,
as my physical therapist explained,
disorganized. They needed to talk
to each other differently. I had to train
them–not with runs, weights, and will
–but through slow motion.
My husband and I never learned
how to talk to each other. Not that
better, slower talk would have made
a difference. Our needs were so big.
He never could give me the freedom
and attention I deserved. Still, I wish
I’d learned to listen and speak earlier.
Now my muscles, well-intentioned
mice, are lumpy and slow. Some
are mute. Some are deaf. They scrounge,
blind, for food they cannot find.
They’ve forgotten their names.
Those who can, whisper gently
to each other with the language
they have left. I massage them, give
them vitamins, slow walks, water and rest.
I treat them with the kindness I never did
when they were beautiful and young.
Coming to Terms with Chronic Illness: Brain Fog
I thrum along the walls, looking for the light switch.
The tenants aren’t paying the rent.
The stoplights blink
wild, senseless patterns. The edges are frizzing;
the center, forgotten.
Someone is drumming off-rhythm.
The headstones have no markings.
It’s like that.
Or this. I’m trying to double-dutch but miss every jump.
The gears turn too slowly for the car to start.
I’m a hutch that holds too much. Or nothing.
A gully stuffed with old refrigerators.
Grit on a gusty day. The gurgle of a clogged drain.
The sludgy bottom of old coffee cups.
I’m humid and moody. I’ve lost momentum.
The old gumption has turned grumpy.
I’ve forgotten my speech in front of the auditorium.
The amygdala is overwrought and exhausted.
Muggy and pudgy, dumpy and rangy.
A jiggly flan. A pale pudding. A mangy dog.
The gaudy necklace has lost its gems.
The buzz-hum drowns the sweet and subtle
music. A muddy mouse hobbles along
slowing synapses. Myopic, we squint
at blurred trees. It's like that.
I want my brain to be a clean afternoon,
but no one water-skis on this murky pond.
No one sits on a beach chair
in this gusty cove. I want to second-guess
everything I’ve ever known
but can’t hold a thought long enough.
I’m drowning in dreams.
Mostly I’m ashamed,
but sometimes relieved to be relieved
of so much thinking.
I’ve forgotten to worry. Or I’m only worry.
I can’t remember which.
I fear you’re asking for that thing only I can give
but I can’t hear you through the mumbling.
I’ve forgotten desire.
I can’t find the doorknob.
But midday, head on a pillow, I hear—
under the couch, the wooden floor,
concrete, the rooty-worm layer,
the clay and the boulders
—that beating heart bedrock,
homefull and nameless,
that’s been with us forever.
It’s like that, too.
Impossible Things I Remember
As I child, I was confused that I remembered my tail (where would it go in my pants
and how would I sit?) until I learned we all had one once, 25 million years ago.
I remember the shock of raw air when I was born and my mother’s sadness.
I remember tin toys from the 1940s.
I think my husband remembers the feel of armor against his shoulder, dough under the heel of his
hand, the joy of thieving. Being a girl.
I wanted my cells to remember the Ireland, land of my ancestors. They did not. Impossible
memories cannot be planned.
I remember the twitch of my feathered wing tip to change flight speed and direction.
My nephew, when he was three, remembered his “other mother.” Her name was Lolly, he said,
and she’d he’d been shot.
I remember drowning. I remember hunger. I don’t remember breathing under water.
I no longer remember what I swore I’d never forget: how to macrame, the string patterns
of cat’s cradle, anything from calculus, most sign language, all my French.
If time and space creases and unfurls like the origami I no longer remember how to fold,
please bury my jukebox full of advertising jingles.
Please release my black cat I had when I was ten. Let me feel her ribs under her thin skin.
Let her nose touch my nose again across these folded dimensions.
