Poem: Second breath
It's 91 degrees upstairs in my shack. I haul myself out into the shockingly cool sun to shit with a thousand fly feet hopping along my skin I think of what it'd be like to be housed in a place with air conditioning and plumbing Gratitude, iz. Gratitude. I count them like prayer beads as i will my reticent bowels to release Space, birdsong, affordability, safe neighborhood for your children, quietude, spectacular rainbows. Clean water. Clean water. Clean water. Clean water. Clean water. I am not myself today. Is this happening more frequently these days or do I have more understanding of its truth? I cannot say Anyway i am nonverbal since i awoke I do know that i am not just me. I am also the whole ecology of the earth In the entirety of its timeline I can tell because no one tiny being could experience this. much. pain. My heart and guts and ribs are boiling and blistering I can't even manage two consistent breaths I try to recall from my textbooks: what species of mammal bargains for a second breath? I wonder if the cracking of my ribs could be detected with medical tech I wonder if I'll fall through the cracks like my uncle. Where is he now? I haven't asked my dad where he was buried. Where am i? How long could i have been here for this much sediment to be pressing down on my soft body. My legs and pelvis find the pressure to be exquisite But my lungs are volcanic with protest My guts beg for bread But I won't eat today I won't ask for help How could i anyway. I am nonverbal. And there isn't anyone to be found who has a crumb to spare They text me "hearts" and "xo's" Show me how to swallow that and I'll try it But even if I ate something nutritious how would I digest it when I am inside out? More compost heap than human Under the lithostatic pressure of centuries of accumulated ecological grief. I am not just myself I am not just my lineages I am also the ocean, boiling and swollen with carbon— like a lycanthrope at a full moonrise—using the final vestiges of its humanity to cry out at the land: Run! I am a clear cut calling out for the return of its corpses: "How can i heal if you won't let me bury my dead?" I say, "blood will have blood" I know im more than me I know my nervous system does not end at my fly-ridden skin Because how else can i reconcile the immensity of this borderless, unmappable, timeless pain How do we find the words to ask when no language is spacious enough to contain this grief? No language to ask No voice to speak So i just lay here quiet and still as i think in thunderings: Who will help me? Who will help us? Run.
Me upstairs. Remembering more than myself.
Notes: “Blood will have blood” is from the Scottish play