can we talk about the moon? I need a poem, not a paragraph or dissertation of facts. i used to know the phases but i’ve lost track of it, no longer willing to do the daily horoscope and tarot pull because life is just different now and maybe i don’t want to know what is happening anymore or play guessing games with my future. i pull the hermit card and i’m like “tell me something I don’t know.”
i don’t want to make plans though everyone wants to now. it’s the question i get asked the most often. “any plans for the weekend/summer/rest of the day/year?” and i used to make stuff up but now i just say “no” or “i might finish this book” or “i’ve started this video game about ghost bears that you need to help resolve their past trauma so they can pass on to the afterlife.” or “get a chipotle burrito bowl and rewatch what we do in the shadows and not that show you suggested i start because i don’t have the capacity to commit to a new set of imaginary people i will inevitably care about.” it’s all solitary affairs that may or may not include dogs. i feel bad saying that i miss lockdown because no one asked me if i had plans.
i shake my fist at the moon because you can’t take a good photo of it with your phone, because i have friends who swear by it, recharging their crystals outside in its light, because it pulls at the oceans and all i want to be is in bodies of water these days but this is the furthest i’ve lived from one and i don’t have a car and i can’t drive and that’s all my own fault but i shake my fist anyway because it’s fun, it feels good and if i’m going to be mad at something, maybe it should be the moon and not myself.
i am actively practicing undoing. unraveling. i am taking the rubber band off of and letting things unspool because everything inside is molding and dying under all this pressure. when i take my socks off and see indentations on my ankles i am contemplating my mortality. this can’t be good. i am no longer sproingy and resilient. i’m letting things imprint themselves on me. my uncle is dying. my dog is hopping around on 3 legs because something happened that we didn’t see and my little furry son has joined Bean and i in the bum knee club. i’m the dough that’s been rising on the counter that you poke a finger into that doesn’t bounce back. i’m ready to be baked. i’m taking it all in. put me in the over already before i become overprooofed and collapse.
jeff reminds me i have propranolol and i almost don’t take one because it’s up a set of stairs i don’t have the bandwidth to go get but he gets it for me.
on bad days, he is the one thread tethering me to myself.
i made a playlist and incorrectly named it "untethered”.
on bad days, it brings me back to myself, even if i’m full of grief and ugly things and uncertainty. i forget that my soul is made of songs, so the music is home. it’s the poem i need.
my mom at the hospital with uncle mario, she gives the attendants and techs updates about his urine output that they didn’t ask for. she can’t stop nursing even though she’s retired. my dad sits in a chair with a mask half off his face and a hat that says “Old Guys Rule” and i wonder if someone gave it to him or if he found it himself and said “hell yeaaah”.
we cannot stop being who we are, even in the face of hard things. i cannot stop taking in the world and letting it change me but as i get older i now whisper “softer, softer, softer” because any other way would be damaging. to me. to others. to the fragile whisper that is hope.
