CW: cause of death
Now Playing: Chasing Pavements by Adele
Today I feel like I’ve been chasing poems across pages,
shoving words rudely, cutting whole sections and only stopping to wonder later if I have a copy of the original. I mostly do.
One poem was trying to have three centers.
One was hyperfixating on Tupperware, a couple of prose sentences trying to say what I still have to figure out how to compress. I’m mulling…
One was in pretty good shape, but did benefit from pruning and a slight expansion.
One made me want to go through a drive-thru for fries and dipping sauce.
One features a writer that I said if he’s ever canceled, it will take me down. He seems avuncular, but you never know.
Another poem I was finding my way through, doing brief tweaks to make it more immediate, when I received news I’d been waiting for and yet made me decide today is not the day for revising that particular poem.
The news? We finally know the cause of death for my youngest sister: basically, her poor heart just gave out due to all it had been through.
It has not been an easy day.
The poem I was working on when I found out was “Driftwood,” which mentions a tragedy I witnessed the aftermath of.
As I said, this is not the day for that poem.
Funny how life can swing between “Oh my god, I love that there are bookstores” to this.
The internet is out at the café, still. I am using my phone as a fitful hotspot.
I am grateful for language, even when it proves inadequate.
I am grateful for answers, for results that, no matter how tragic, are not what I had feared.
Another poem I was working on was “To Power the Human Heart.” It received a vein today that it hadn’t formerly had.
There’s a disconnect between who my heart thinks I am and the things I have to know.
I’ve been listening to an audiobook, Mrs. Christie at the Mystery Guild Library, recommended, I think, by Kendra Adachi. The narrator keeps the voices, even during the tough stuff, upbeat and hopeful.
That’s who I am, at core.
Maybe that’s all my writing is, is my brain and body rejecting anything that interferes with what I wish the world were. With the things I’ve had to face.
Gosh, that wasn’t very upbeat.
I reckon that today, that’s ok.
Tomorrow is and all…
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