Stem

noun  

• The main body or stalk of a plant or shrub, typically rising above ground but occasionally subterranean.
• The stalk supporting a fruit, flower, or leaf, and attaching it to a larger branch, twig, or stalk.
• A long, thin supportive or main section of something
• The slender part of a wine glass between the base and the bowl
• The tube of a tobacco pipe
• A rod or cylinder in a mechanism, for example the sliding shaft of a bolt or the winding pin of a watch
• A vertical stroke in a letter or musical note.
• Grammar The root or main part of a word, to which inflections or formative elements are added.
• • archaic or • literary The main line of descent of a family or nation
• The main upright timber or metal piece at the bow of a ship, to which the ship’s sides are joined at the front end
• US • informal A pipe used for smoking crack or opium.

verb (stems, stemming, stemmed)

• [no object] (stem from) Originate in or be caused by
• [with object] Remove the stems from (fruit or tobacco leaves)
• [with object] (Of a boat) make headway against (the tide or current)
• [with object] Stop or restrict (the flow of something)
• Stop the spread or development of (something undesirable)
• [no object] Skiing Slide the tail of one ski or both skis outwards in order to turn or slow down

abbreviation

• Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (as an educational category)

Origin

Old English stemn, stefn, of Germanic origin; related to Dutch stam and German Stamm. sense 4 of the noun is related to Dutch steven, German Steven
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/stem?q=stem#STEM

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It was already today when she went to bed and just short of three hours later when she woke, unable to move her legs, with tears falling down her face. Muscles curved her left leg forward with such force that it pushed her blanket off the bed. She pushed at her left leg, first at her thigh and then at her calf, ankle, foot, and toes, in order to ease the awkward, wrong-direction stretch. Her right leg curved over her left. Once she was able to swing her legs off the side of the bed and sit up, she sat for small blocks of time, stretching and pulling and rubbing her legs, before trying to lay down again hoping the muscles would cooperate. Each time, they would not. The dog wearily shifted around her tossing. After a dozen or so attempts, the spasms stopped and she was able to lay back down, though only on her back-- a position she didn't trust. 

She wanted to cry-- felt like she could-- but also feared someone seeing her cry. She worried someone had seen the tears on her face when she woke. There was no one there, she knew, but still she feared being seen. She had no idea what she wanted to cry about...no idea from what the push of emotion stemmed. The pain with which she woke, her body controlled by something else, sufficiently distracted her from pursuing understanding. But now, as she stared at the crack in the ceiling stretching from one end of the room to the other, she wondered what crying was meant to be. 

Does crying ask for attention or is it expression alone? 
Is it the way the body flushes out toxins or the way it reminds us how like the ocean we are? 
Is it a display of weakness-- an invitation on which stronger people prey, creating more crying, to prey even more and continue the cycle without end? 

One of the reasons she'd survived, she knew, was her intense curiosity to understand-- to understand herself, to understand others, to get a handle on dates and details and circumstances. Smells and colors and light and textures were experienced in extreme ways--often physically and emotionally painful ways--but they were necessary and so she kept quiet and dealt. She worked tirelessly at piecing together everything--even the smallest things-- in a way that she could digest or classify or do something for which a word had not yet been coined. It was her curiosity to understand WHY-- like a perpetual question from a toddler to a tired parent: 

 "But WHYYYYY!" 
--short, nonsensical reply-- 
"But WHYYYYYYYYYY!" 
-- shorter, nonsensical reply-- 
"But WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY"
--non-answer answer "BECAUSE"--   

Because suspended why. Being yelled at, reprimanded, made to feel as though she was a toddler, suspended why. And that BECAUSE came from both the outside and from within herself. 

She fell asleep on her back, in time, as she stared at the crack in the ceiling, thought on endless, circular questions, and concentrated on the rhythm of the dog's expanding rib cage against the outside of her legs. 

The alarm woke her soon after. She was able to move her legs, though they were sore. Her stomach, shoulders, wrists and lower arms ached as if she'd been in a fight during her final hour of sleep. Light and sound hurt and when she rested her hands on her thighs before she stood to head to the bathroom, she startled at her own touch and felt nausea rise, nausea which grew exponentially when she wiped to find she was sticky. Immediately, she got in the shower and started to cry. 

But WHYYYYY!
--no answer-- 
But WHYYYYYYYYYY!
-- no answer-- 
But WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY
--only-answer, answer "YOU--IT'S YOU--FOREVER WORTHLESS"   

She stopped WHY and stopped crying and started to wash her hair, smelling the scent of peppermint trailing down the sides of her face. She stood under the hot water and scrubbed at herself, trying to exfoliate more than just the top layer of skin. 

My top layer isn't the only one dead and disgusting--disgusting reaches far beneath...

She lifted her stomach and her breasts and other rolls of fat out of the way of the scrubbing before scrubbing them as well. She no longer felt the water, the temperature or the sound. She no longer felt the scrubbing or smelled the peppermint. Focussed, the bad night of sleep and all of the bad nights from which this one stemmed, disappeared. 

She, however, still needed to go to work.

She stepped out of the shower, grabbed a towel, made effort not to see herself in the mirror. She brushed her hair back, pushing the excess water in the strands to the ends, before squeezing it out from the twisted bunch and into the tub. Dropping the brush into the sink, switching the light off, and heading into the bedroom, she prepared to dress.

A collection of clothes, pulled from the dresser, the closet, and the laundry basket were left piled at the edge of the bed. She dropped the towel, simultaneously picking up her underwear, balancing on her sore left leg as she lifted her right leg through the opening. She decided to grab her towel and take it back into the bathroom, hanging it to dry, and when she did she saw herself in the mirror, exposed chest, remaining tear stains, and for the first time since she'd been five, a five year old.

And she wondered...

WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY...

...before the dizzy set in, she lost balance on her sore legs, and she fell, hitting her head off of the tub...

Thread

noun

• A long, thin strand of cotton, nylon, or other fibres used in sewing or weaving
• [mass noun] Cotton, nylon, or other fibres spun into long, thin strands and used for sewing
• literary A long, thin line or piece of something
• A theme or characteristic running throughout a situation or piece of writing
• A group of linked messages posted on an Internet forum that share a common subject or theme.
• Computing A programming structure or process formed by linking a number of separate elements or subroutines, especially each of the tasks executed concurrently in multithreading.
• (also screw thread) A helical ridge on the outside of a screw, bolt, etc. or on the inside of a cylindrical hole, to allow two parts to be screwed together.
• (threads) • informal, chiefly North American Clothes

verb

• [with object] Pass a thread through the eye of (a needle) or through the needle and guides of (a sewing machine)
• [with object and adverbial of direction] Pass (a long, thin object or piece of material) through something and into the required position for use
• [no object, with adverbial of direction] Move carefully or skilfully in and out of obstacles
• Interweave or intersperse as if with threads
• Put (beads or other small objects) on a thread, chain, etc.
• (usually as adjective threaded) Cut a screw thread in or on (a hole, screw, or other object)

Phrases 
hang by a thread 
lose the (or one's) thread 

Origin

Old English thrǣd (noun), of Germanic origin; related to Dutch draad and German Draht, also to the verb throw. The verb dates from late Middle English.

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/thread?q=thread

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Story stitched in. Needle and thread. I focus on the eye. The point stares back.

I follow a feminine seam-- my story sewn in her story sung, her painted pain, her words, drawings, dances divulging our suspended stories started while sailing alone, continued while wading in pungent, paralyzing darkness searching for the end of the thread.

The March moon wanes to new, giving rise to release let from the depth of this darkness. In quiet, my self's story sails softly over squares sewn solely for holding the hidden. Stories embedded in bed covers. Bed covers covering nothing. And I watch these stories speak through fibers--every fiber, my being--cloth shaking, it seems, with seam-splitting aftershocks. Laid out, as I was, these quieted quilts of bound loops I'm to lay on--to sleep on-- strangle speech. Stories speak at nap time to the kindergarten napper after milk from un-kid kind cartons, pulled open from every side. Blankets after treats--cookies--Gingersnaps. Good things. Sweet things. Good little girl things.

By second grade, after the cessation of cookies and milk as nap snacks, I eat crayons— chew wax and chew paper. I swallow. White. Fuchsia. Green. Teal. Red. Maroon. Yellow. Chartreuse. Black and blue. Ingesting warrants hallway banishment. I offer no argument and chew a few wax snacks I sneak out once I've been set aside. I make no effort to be invited back, waiting through punishment. I'm permitted to return to my desk only after I've had time to "Think about what you've done." I alternate between wax and glue after that.

Fourth follows after milk and after cookies and after waxy chew toys and as I recognize I'm realizing differently the 'nothing' covered by bed covers. Fourth comes with a need for something. A need for anyone. Every fold of my skin, every roll of my fat, squares off and fills. Stories embed. Sheets. Sheet after sheet. Sheets upon sheets. Ream after ream—tear, tuck, and fold into origami pillows— pillows on which to rest—pillows stuffing the quilt squares of my skin--stuffing weight--so that I step on the scale at Strawbridge's and Clothier and Mom-Mom says, "The scale is wrong. You aren't that heavy" and shame, the name rather than Virginia (or the discarded Ida) that should have been passed down to me, cross-stiches its massive 'S' on every remaining fabric pocket. My body is horrible and I live inside. I read my mother's medical books and The Scarlet Letter to understand. The pictures of women being examined in the medical books enforce the normality of exposure and the 'A' on Hester's chest illuminates the letters I wear.

I'm Mom-Mom-less midway through sixth and there are no more walks through a backyard to water on which I sailed. No more investigations through closeted furs to find the door leading to Narnia. No more watching her sleep and worrying for her breathing in between Black Beauty chapters. No more safe bed. No more safe weekends. No more being quiety cared for. I grieve exponential loss by drinking pink soda. Stories still speak when it's sleep begging to be heard. 

Still searching for thread

end not in sight, I follow

"You will never learn"

I'm told--I'm told I'm
cause for what's wrong with the world
though in fewer words

actions yell instead
driving home from the station
where my trying stopped

story goes to bed
beside me, she's beside me
I am still alone

In eighth, by thirteen, when dark doesn't come from outside, I turn the lights off myself. I flip switches through my thirty-fifth year. I've learned, though they said I'd never. "I'll get you, my pretty. And..." I'm grateful I wasn't allowed to have a dog. I'm my own Wicked Witch-- winged monkeys circling my own monkey in the middle. I'm Cowardly Lion, made out of tin, trying to play wizard to the Dorothy I depend on to find a place called "No place like home"-- a place you look to for solace sewn simply, over and under and over and under, knots keeping the lines in place, story stitched in.

my story is not
story with that no place like
home, but her story's

threads bear witness to
themes and truths in my story
so, I keep reading

Pass

verb

• Move or cause to move in a specified direction
• [no object, with adverbial of direction] Change from one state or condition to another
• [no object] • euphemistic , chiefly North American Die
• [with object] Go past or across; leave behind or on one side in proceeding
• Go beyond the limits of; surpass or exceed
• Tennis Hit a winning shot past (an opponent).
• [no object] (Of time) elapse; go by
• [with object] Spend or use up (a period of time)
• Come to an end
• Happen; be done or said
• [with object and usually with adverbial of direction] Transfer (something) to someone, especially by handing or bequeathing it to the next person in a series
• [no object, with adverbial] Be transferred from one person or place to another, especially by inheritance
• (In soccer, rugby, and other games) kick, hit, or throw (the ball) to another player of one’s own side
• Put (something, especially money) into circulation
• [no object] (Especially of money) circulate; be current
• [with object] (Of a candidate) be successful in (an examination, test, or course)
• Judge the performance or standard of (someone or something) to be satisfactory
• [no object] (pass as/for) Be accepted as or taken for
• [no object] Be accepted as adequate; go unremarked
• (Of a legislative or other official body) approve or put into effect (a proposal or law) by voting on it
• [no object] (Of a proposal) be approved by a legislative or other official body
• [with object] Pronounce (a judgement or judicial sentence)
• Utter (something, especially criticism)
• [no object] (pass on/upon) • archaic Adjudicate or give a judgement on
• [with object] Discharge (something, especially urine or faeces) from the body
• [no object] Forgo one’s turn in a game or an offered opportunity to do or have something
• [as exclamation] Said when one does not know the answer to a question, for example in a quiz
• [with object] (Of a company) not declare or pay (a dividend)
• Bridge Make no bid when it is one’s turn during an auction

noun

• An act or instance of moving past or through something
• An act of passing the hands over something, as in conjuring or hypnotism.
• A thrust in fencing.
• A juggling trick.
• Computing A single scan through a set of data or a program.
• A success in an examination, test, or course
• British An achievement of a university degree without honours
• A card, ticket, or permit giving authorization for the holder to enter or have access to a place, form of transport, or event
• historical (In South Africa) an identity book which black people had to carry between 1952 and 1986, used to limit the movement of black people to urban areas.
• (In soccer, rugby, and other games) an act of kicking, hitting, or throwing the ball to another player on the same side
• informal An amorous or sexual advance made to someone
• A state or situation of a specified, usually undesirable, nature
• Bridge An act of refraining from bidding during the auction.

Phrases 
pass the baton 
pass the buck 
pass one's eye over 
pass go 
pass the hat (round) 
pass one's lips 
pass muster 
pass the parcel 
pass the time of day 
pass water 

Phrasal verbs 
pass away 
pass someone by 
pass off 
pass something off 
pass someone/thing off as 
pass on 
pass out 
pass over 
pass someone over 
pass something over 
pass something up 

Origin

Middle English: from Old French passer, based on Latin passus'pace'.
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/pass?q=pass

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Spin Art was the last present she’d pass from her hands to mine before she wasn’t anywhere I could touch her any longer.  

That last Christmas, Mom-Mom spun and circled.  I was to sing in the choir on Christmas Eve but didn't get to go. We went to the hospital instead.  It was one of very few times, if not the only time, I saw Mom-Mom when she was there. 

She bought me the Spin Art toy I'd seen on the commercial. Happy children attached paper to the center of a spinning circle with walls.  Onto that spinning paper they dropped paint streams and paint tears, creating colorful, sun-burst spin paintings-- paintings where the centers bled out, stretched out, reached all the way to where the walls prevented them from going further.

My mother handed Spin Art to Mom-Mom so Mom-Mom could pass it to me. Mom-Mom, confused, started to open it instead.  When my mother took it back from her, she carefully folded the corner of the gift-wrap and re-taped the opening closed. Then she handed it to me.

I don’t remember what my brother received.  I don’t remember what my parents received.  I remember what she gave me—the Spin Art and a Snuggle Bear ornament she’d received from sending in the UPCs off of dryer sheet boxes. I remember what they bought her—a two-sided photo album for school pictures, one side for me and one side for my brother. That year’s school pictures were already there and there were, my mother told Mom-Mom, plenty of empty sleeves she could fill with pictures ‘in the years to follow.’ 

That night, when we returned home, I played with the Spin Art, dropping reds and yellows and greens and blues onto the spinning picture, smelling the sweetness of the paint, touching the warped wetness of the paper, and feeing the sink that is a wordless knowing--a blue, spun painting-- of loss.  

****

We took home saplings from school on Arbor Day.  I couldn’t plant mine at home.

Nothing grew there.  

When we went to the cemetery to visit Mom-Mom, I took the tiny tree, a tiny shovel, and some water.  Back in the row of trees, where there was a gap, I dug a small hole and planted the little evergreen.

I checked on it every time we went to visit, convincing myself it was growing.  I don’t believe it ever did.  I do not believe it ever died.  It just stayed small forever, hiding under the shadow of the larger trees, back behind the stone that said Mom-Mom in different words.

I think she was buried in a pink dress.  I remember pink because of that dress and the raspberry ginger ale. But I don’t really remember—I only truly remember the top of her head from the vantage point of the bench on the other side of the room, the bench I sat on before Aunt Jan took us to her house to get us away from the evening, the Aunt Jan who gave me raspberry ginger ale to make it all better.

At the end of the viewing, my parents picked us up at Aunt Jan’s, took us home, put us to bed, got us up, got us dressed, and we waited for the limo to take us to the funeral home on that MLK holiday Monday-- Mom-Mom's funeral delayed so we didn’t have to miss school.  

I wanted the ground at the cemetery to feel mushy—for it to give under my feet like it had when I walked to the creek behind Mom-Mom's house, under the crab able trees, winding toward a place that was mine alone.  Instead, the ground was hard—frozen-- and it hurt to walk both because of the temperature exposure to my skin and nerves and because the hardness of the ground was so impenetrable. Frozen ground did not give when I asked frozen ground to give her back to me.  

So I stood still—heard words---ash and dust--stayed as still as I could because nothing more could happen if I stood still.  Two years after my father had his heart attack, Mom-Mom now gone, nothing more could happen if I made myself invisible. Nothing more could happen if I was still enough for 'more' to pass over.

But so much more would come to pass.

Let

verb

• [with object and infinitive] Not prevent or forbid; allow
• [with object and adverbial of direction] Allow to pass in a particular direction
• [with object and infinitive] Used in the imperative to formulate various expressions
• (let us or let's) Used as a polite way of making or responding to a suggestion, giving an instruction, or introducing a remark
• (let me or let us) Used to make an offer of help
• Used to express one’s strong desire for something to happen or be the case
• Used as a way of expressing defiance or challenge
• Used to express an assumption upon which a theory or calculation is to be based
• [with object] chiefly British Allow someone to have the use of (a room or property) in return for regular payments
• Award (a contract for a project) to an applicant

noun British

• period during which a room or property is rented
• property available for rent

noun

• (In racket sports) a circumstance under which a service is nullified and has to be taken again, especially (in tennis) when the ball clips the top of the net and falls within bounds

verb [with object] archaic

• Hinder

Origin

Old English lettan 'hinder', of Germanic origin; related to Dutch letten, also to late.

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/let?q=let
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/let?q=let#let-2
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Once, her clothes had fit. Now, ratty khakis and a sweatshirt draped her tall, thin frame like a bedsheet on a child Halloweening as a ghost. And like one, she'd damn near glided into the room when she'd entered, stopping at the nurse's station.

"People are worried, but what kind of God would give it to me twice?"

"When is the biopsy?" the nurse asked.

Without any detectable fear in her voice, the woman in the too-big clothing replied, "Thursday morning, but not until after my poker game."

She stood in an opening between a wall and a translucent partition separating medical staff from patients. I could only see her. Except, of course, I could also see myself. When the nurse replied, her voice held all of Too-Big's fear. "I hope you win," she told her.

I'd been sitting waiting for half an hour while I watched and listened to the interaction between Too-Big Clothing and the nurse I couldn't see. When repeat bloodwork was requested after elevated levels in January, the Physician's Assistant asked me to promise not to worry. She wasn't worried, she'd told me. I laughed to make the question go away. I knew I'd worry and told her the same. Over the course of the month, though, I'd found enough distractions between the hours of 8 AM and 9 PM to cope and wait without the ever-present fear. Approximately 97.75% of the time I listened to doctor's orders not to worry.

The rest of the time, I worried. I worried when I let myself worry. I worried out of default. I left myself vulnerable and I worried, breaking the promise I'd acknowledged with the nervous laugh, when I'd lay down to bed or when I'd wake. And anything that left me vulnerable, of which sleep itself could be counted, opened a door for every other worry, every other fear, every other head or body memory of any vulnerability. I could work to the others from cancer or from cancer to the others. One thing trailed into the next like hurled gripes in an unfair argument between bitter partners.

I was tired.

When I talked to Kim later that evening, having walked out of the oncologist's office without the resolution expected, we'd both agreed we didn't have an overwhelming feeling that something was wrong this time. Kim reminded me of how I'd been the first time-- of how tired I'd been, how after work, I'd come home, immediately hit the couch and sleep as long as I could. I reminded her that I couldn't, at that time, tie the exhaustion to illness. Rather, I had tied tired to depression coming from a vulnerability manipulated by a co-worker...a co-worker who repeatedly told me he was dying, when the truth was that I was, though I didn't know it yet. Diagnosis would come a few months later. She reminded me how the lump in my neck had worried her and how the lasting cough produced solid balls of mucus that made me vomit. I reminded her of how I'd cried in pain for weeks, facing the back of the couch, because I was embarrassed that I experienced pain I couldn't explain and that I could do nothing to alleviate, and the last thing I wanted to do was complain. The vulnerability of attention made me too small.

I thought of Too-Big Clothing. I thought of how small she was, physically, but how large she was in her presence-- her presence full of air. I thought of the beauty in her words and how her question--"What kind of God would give it to me twice?"--sounded simultaneously assured and resigned. I doubt she believed lightning couldn't strike twice. It had, already, for her. The 'something's wrong' had been hers before. And she was back there, letting the worry wait until after her poker game.

And I couldn't wait any longer. But I did...and I didn't.

Seconds later, a woman approached, paper in her hand. "You've been waiting for this," she said, before walking away without any additional information. I'd managed a "thank you" in reply, though I didn't understand the interaction.

I'd been told I could wait for results...that the bloodwork would be read and someone would discuss it with me before leaving. Instead, I had waited for results-- three sheets of paper with numbers and ranges and historic data. I knew some, but not enough. I could, however, recognize that my white cell count was still out of range.

I passed the translucent partition and leaned expectantly on the counter replying to the "Can I help you?" with questions. Had I read this correctly? What was I to do next? There weren't answers I could do much with, only a reply that the doctor would read them and get back to me.

I didn't have a poker game. I did have a counseling meeting and work and emails and phone calls and writing and distractions. I did need to let myself exist in the fear of repeat lightning, the sadness of all the other lightning with which I'd burned and, my least favorite, the anger of having let myself be treated as an afterthought, as a thing, and as unworthy of basic respect.

Though you wouldn't
know it to look
at me, I am
as small as
she, underneath
what you see--This
presentation
me is merely
the picture I'm holding
out of fear--
failure
or freedom--This
presentation
me
letting me be
less than
I am
a poker faced
player
waiting on a
win

Back

noun

• the rear surface of the human body from the shoulders to the hips
• the upper surface of an animal’s body that corresponds to a person’s back
• the spine of a person or animal.
• the main structure of a ship’s hull or an aircraft’s fuselage
• the part of a garment that covers a person’s back
• a person’s back regarded as carrying a load or bearing an imposition
• the side or part of something that is away from the spectator or from the direction in which it moves or faces; the rear
• the position directly behind someone or something
• the side or part of an object that is not normally seen or used
• the part of a chair against which the sitter’s back rests.
• a player in a team game who plays in a defensive position behind the forwards
• (the Backs) the grounds of Cambridge colleges which back on to the River Cam.

adverb

• in the opposite direction from the one that one is facing or traveling towards
• expressing movement of the body into a reclining position
• at a distance away
• (back of) North American • informal behind
• North American • informal losing by a specified margin
• so as to return to an earlier or normal position or condition
• at a place previously left or mentioned
• fashionable again
• in or into the past
• in return

verb

• [with object] give financial, material, or moral support to
• supplement in order to strengthen
• bet money on (a person or animal) winning a race or contest
• [with object] cover the back of (an article) in order to support, protect, or decorate it
• [no object, with adverbial of direction] walk or drive backwards
• [no object] (of the wind) change direction anticlockwise around the points of the compass
• [with object] Sailing put (a sail) aback in order to slow the vessel down or assist in turning through the wind.
• [no object] (back on/ on to) (of a building or other structure) have its back facing or adjacent to
• [with object] lie behind or at the back of
• put a piece of music on the less important side of (a vinyl recording)
• (in popular music) provide musical accompaniment to (a singer or musician)

adjective

• of or at the back of something
• in a remote or subsidiary position
• from or relating to the past
• directed towards the rear or in a reversed course
• Phonetics (of a sound) articulated at the back of the mouth

Origin Old English bæc, of Germanic origin; related to Middle Dutch and Old Norse bak. The adverb use dates from late Middle English and is a shortening of aback.
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/back?q=back
____________________________________________________________________
I couldn't have identified the noise as screaming before. I hear words for a second but not long enough to determine what they are. That second is only long enough to recognize the sound as words. As soon as I try to listen, the wordless words turn to screaming and those screams smother, leaving me overwhelmed by their noise. Collectively, the screams are sirens receding into words spoken under water. I hear only the vibrations-- the brontide-- and they make me dizzy, distort my vision, leave me cold and drop my heartbeat from the center of my chest to the bottom of my back.

For 18 years, I heard sirens every night. When I laid in the middle of the road, in the middle of the night, I expected an ambulance would run me over and grind my fat, bones, and skin into the asphalt. The hospital was only a half-block down, close enough that the flashing lights would bounce off the baby blue walls of my bedroom. That night, for those hours, there weren't any sirens. Every other night, it seemed they screamed all night long. Every other night, when my fat and bones and skin--when my insides and my outsides-- were ground down beside my breath and my voice and my sense of the ground, there were sirens. In hard spaces now, I hear sirens where there are or are not actual sirens. Maybe I'm hearing words disguised as underwater voices disguised as screams disguised as sirens. Maybe sound sounds different from behind.

When I look back or go back or find myself back without realizing I've traveled back, it is like trying to listen to these voices. At first, I hear screaming and try to stay still, hoping that maybe this night or the next one or the next day will be the day when those screaming sirens silence, when there is nothing coming to kill me, when and where I don't experience terror from outside or inside. Then I hear murmurs from under water--or something like the Charlie Brown teacher voice. The harder I try to listen, the more I'm smothered with indistinguishable sound and the harder it is to hear what's dangerous. The harder I try, the further away I go. The harder I try, the more voices I hear in the cacophony. The more voices I hear--the more the sounds touch me--the smaller and smaller I must get inside this shell of fat and bones and skin. I am so far away underneath-- I am so far back.

Back a week ago or so, I woke from a dream in which I'd been standing above the backyard at my childhood home playing a Native American Flute. The grass was growing beneath my feet and there was a minimal breeze lifting branches in soft waves. There was neither sun nor rain-- gray blanketed everything, save for the deep, deep green of the grass and the deep, reddish brown of the flute. Everything I could see looked incredibly beautiful, yet in the dream I experienced a paralyzing sadness the beauty understood. I could do nothing more than play a three-quarter time, mournful, repetitive melody. I sensed people listening, and though I never saw them, the greater my sense they were there, the greater my sadness. I didn't want to be heard, but I kept playing.

Looking back, though I'm not certain I knew what the efforts were then, I've made many efforts at being heard--many efforts at 'playing the flute'. (As a side note, when I was faced with the 4th grade decision to pick an instrument to learn, I listened to the sample record given to us in music class and decided I wanted to play the flute. I learned the clarinet instead. My mother played flute and didn't want me to play the same instrument.) In an effort to both be heard and to stop hurt, there have been multiple suicide attempts-- starting in elementary school and running right through until college. There were loud nightmares and weird behaviors and clinging and refusing to play with other kids and extreme fits of depression. There have been writings and drawings I see as exposing once I've completed them. Of course, I only see this when looking back and so I have no expectation that anyone at any time during this time would have understood all of my oddities as telling. 

I don't think I've ever stopped my efforts at being heard and that truth bothers me. I feel like I should be over it all by now. That's the general expectation of the world--get over it. An eighth grade teacher asked why I couldn't believe that people cared, why I couldn't hold on to that truth. At thirteen years old I couldn't, and twenty-two years later, I still can't. My logical brain understands that truth but my being does not know that truth. And still, when I'm heard, I don't feel heard 'right' or 'enough' or I reject being heard all together. I'm waiting on something else or something more or, or, or. Maybe it's that I don't know what I'm trying to say or express or let out. So I keep trying, but I hurt worse for the trying because I feel I've failed and then I feel shame and it all circles back again and again. It is--I am--in a constant state of conflict. So much of the work I do is internal and I still opt to go it alone.

I knew the beauty understood the sadness in the dream because the beauty stopped. While I played, it did not move. It held space, like a scene on a canvas. The wind, minimal to start, stopped. The beauty gave me permission to keep going. It held back its own energy so I could express my own. And I believed it meant the gesture.

Dark

ADJECTIVE

with little or no light

hidden from knowledge; mysterious

archaic ignorant; unenlightened

(of a theater) closed; not in use

(of a color or object) not reflecting much light; approaching black in shade

(of someone’s skin, hair, or eyes) brown or black in color

(of a person) having dark skin, hair, or eyes

served or drunk with only a little or no milk or cream

(of a period of time or situation) characterized by tragedy, unhappiness, or unpleasantness

gloomily pessimistic

(of an expression) angry; threatening

suggestive of or arising from evil characteristics or forces; sinister

NOUN

(the dark) the absence of light in a place

Origin

Old English deorc, of Germanic origin, probably distantly related to German tarnen'conceal'.

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/dark?q=dark

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Truth

NOUN

• the quality or state of being true
• (also the truth) that which is true or in accordance with fact or reality
• a fact or belief that is accepted as true

Origin

Old English trīewth, trēowth 'faithfulness, constancy'

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/truth?q=truth

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Truth be told, I have a perception of myself that is decidedly different from the perception other people have of me and that makes me feel bad because it is just as disjointed as the perception others had/have of my family and the reality of what it was to be a child-adult in that space and, truth be told, I'm not sure what perception of me is truth, my own or 90% of the inside-outsiders and that makes me question everything about who I am and how I am and whether I am and whether I should be or could be or deserve to be anything at all when I'm not sure whether what I know I KNOW  because, truth be told, I grew up being told to shut up whether there were words or actions instructing me to do so and so I questioned everything and everyone and kept that questioning to myself where it, undoubtedly, caused cancer and so, truth be told, I believe myself the cause of my cancer and when I find myself as sad as I am again, for the zillionth time, I wonder what came first, the cancer or the sad, as though as simple as a chicken and an egg, and they are, I suppose, because they are each a part of the other and knowing how parted--how siloed--the parts seem but how intertwined they are, in each moment-to-moment I fear, because I appear so parted from my family but know we are so much a part of each other, how long it will take until, bit by bit out of me will sneak the mental illness that is theirs, and the addiction that is theirs, and the hurting that is theirs, knowing full well, they are all mine as well and so, as I contemplate truth and telling, truth be told, I've no idea where to begin or whether to begin or whether it is I've already begun the process of threading together the pieces I doubt and know but doubt and then don't and toss and turn, closed off in a head, inside a body, inside a person who doesn't perceive herself as person, though the perception of others forces more questions to toss and turn and wrap around myself, but to keep to myself, as a struggle of speaking truth while still being shut up and so, truth be told, I wish I could be more sad and more angry and more hurt and more afraid because I know I can be those and yet cutoff from the depth of them because feeling wasn't something I was supposed to do or meant to do or didn't do in order to protect the person I don't believe myself to be, I swim in, expecting to truly understand feeling and, as a result to understand alive, but I guilt myself into the name-calling because this masochistic non-person swims in the pool that hurts in an effort to try to learn how to feel rather than the pool of positive because that pool is not unlike an ice lake but, truth be told, no one would believe that goes on inside me because I'm still 'shut up' and seem positive and loving and caring and all these things they tell me I am and which, in the moments I may be being them, perhaps I am, but when I try to take them after the fact, I deny just as vehemently as being called by name because, truth be told, existing isn't easy and I never expected it to be, because honestly I just don't expect except when the expectations come from the same old pool, yet it doesn't look that way to you, and truth be told, that's probably OK in some ways but I wish, I think, that the truth I told looked even more OK, even more of whatever it is you want it to be in whatever way it can lift you from the pool you may be in and drowning with pockets full of stones because, truth be told I don't want my story to end with me swimming in the wrong pool with a pocket full of stones even though, I'm pretty certain that's the amniotic fluid out of which I was born.