this is just to say: Physical Education

03 June 2010

Physical Education

Every day is an up/down hill battle. I asked JB seriously the other day if he thought I was bipolar and his response was a yes and retroactive yes. And he never addressed it by name previously, I think, because it wouldn't have been helpful for me.

I constantly feel like I'm trapped or like I'm losing. And when the days are good, I can't for the life of me, imagine the terrible ones. And vice versa.

Recently, I more and more recognize so much of my mother's sickness in my current self. This alarms me so much--I think I have to let go of my dream for/of children. I do not want to subject them to what JB already has to suffer through.

And yet all I want to do most days now is to let close people around me go. To just go to work, do it well (my office is getting more and more official/adult/real every week), go home, cook something new, and just read/watch movies until I feel sleepy.

I don't want to be responsible or care for another person. No matter the reward. I can't even take care of myself. I barely am able to convince myself in the bad moments that I need to not do self-harm.

It shouldn't have to be this way. I thought I was trying to get help. I am/was, but I feel this great self-imposed pressure which I've erected on behalf of the people around me in mind.

I just want anonymity and my own device-cure for loneliness. I think I do choose the humdrum depression over these manic swings.

I worry now, that I can't get better or be well. That everything that's been conditioned within me will stay and render me useless.

More nights than not, I fear that I'm not supposed to be living with the others/strangers around me. That I should be put away.

This realization makes me so sad and tired. I'm losing the retrieval.

from "Euphoria," by Sina Queyras

1

Dear Regret, my leaning this morning, my leather foot, want of stone, my age
Old, burnished and bruised, my hair lingering, my hand caked, spongy as
November my dear Relentless, my dear Aging, your voice tinny, dissonant
As Stein shot through decades of war and Fortrel, cocktails on the hour,
Zeppelins over Piccadilly, bombing blindly in the fog. Dear Skin, dear Tobacco
Mouth my refusal, my merely geographic, my fibrous strings for you: your
Abundant wit, your lack of shadow and still joy nosing the air. Each moment
Stretches toward you, your dry feet: I carried them, pumiced and peppery
Laid them where regret is a biscuit thing to lean upon and sweeten,
My hour of you, my cursive thoughts, a pulpit beating under these ribs.

2

Dear Time, you swallowed us whole, swallowed us lovely, sharp as bones
Crimping sadly under foot my benign, my flotsam and crabs thin as leaves
Your smoothing, your sinking in. Mornings or mooring, or wallowing
Jericho: tapioca air indolent. I am still there, supple and driftwood, you lovely,
You loved me, your memory dark and west, thoughts like tugboats stitching
The horizon, you pulling me, my pudding, my thin crustacean, sideways
In the late afternoon, your gaze, having so soon forgotten the sharpness
Of mornings, the bite of your look serrating the hour: my treasures, all
Of them, for the pleasure of that slice once more, of our dangling,
You and me, the lot of us in some car, driving some hour, mapless.

3

Under a spiderweb, a tire, slouched: flat, sad-lipped, I think of Newton
Of the original apple, all of these clones since, all of these scentless
Descents. I shake my glass, shake again, melted suffixes tinkling; observe
All things natural: foliage unfurling like old bills, wryly betraying
Your habits, like the dog who digs and rubs, the dog who whines, who
Paws and circles, you trace. Why is pain so much better than nothing? Or
The mark of it more understandable? Why is saying nothing so much better?
Your one-liner like blossoms, uplifting, your currents strap me to air, yes
I guess there is a little texture up here, and oxygen pure as baby’s toes
Which if I recall, are sweet as kernels of corn, if I recall so long ago.

4

To arrive is practice, conversation or conversion, a story over a field
My Sweet, of concrete or whispering, furrows of a path no longer, not
Sure, was there, and snow combed in curlicues and dog ears a zigzag
Through January. Sure you are witty, but are you any less romantic?
In my remembering, I have undone all my beliefs, it is a luxury to lay
Unencumbered here, or there, the bones flexed with tendons, the
Spine like a seahorse, the heart far from a cliche unless beating is
Innocent, though innocence is not as supple as you think, nor as flexible,
Nor as perfumed, nor convenient, or even clean: between things regret
Gathers force. I remember that day: it was cold and the coffee tepid.

5

The small red balloons like thumbprints, waves green as the brush of
Cedar, the wind lapping your hoodie, blind strings tap the air, camera
Bobbing like a dog’s tail. Such lightness, the dog heading off, all
The dogs of English Bay angling off-leash. I would follow backward,
Lay old maps on your white sheets, so sincere, I am in earnest for you:
We won’t regret having not yet knit our acrid puns and jaded barbs, nor
Having the wind slip in under our belt loops, though I gently refuse
Gor-Tex, and you bet I will not concede the game. Those small red
Balloons like tulips in your eyes specs of amber, an amulet, an avatar,
My thoughts of you fully indexed, ready to step into.

03 June 2010

Physical Education

(underbed stor)age