settle, settle
I’ve been having trouble sleeping. Most nights I trace the same thoughts over & again while my eyes glaze in an approximation of sight. Bad Body. Bad Brain. Can’t even do the one thing that’ll help it stay. My bedroom, which is a closet, which is not a metaphor, but is a closet, is terribly uninspiring. Too itchy & too warm, &, as I’ve noticed recently, the only popcorned surface in my home. My mind has drawn the why of this too many times. Come up blank. Occasionally, in an effort to haunt my own home, I will wander through each room & point a ghostly indication. Plaster, wood, plaster, popcorn. If I spirit into one particular corner, I can witness all of them at the same time. Pose why why. This doesn’t help me sleep but it’s the closest I come.
Here, I’m afraid that I’ve misled you.
Here, I mean: I keep thinking I’ll feel worse.
Sorrow is a funny thing. I don’t trust it no matter which shape it takes. I am too acquainted with dark ceiling but I have found more delight lately than I have in years. Felt more love than in the same. If you look me in the eye, I will sound out shackled. I will clutch at the space of my heart & pronounce single in that way that is in one breath both lonely & free. Is this sorrow? A friend offers the word thriving in her palm & I cradle it back.
There’s an old poem that I have about an emotionally unavailable man & my capsized wreckage in him. In it there’s the line: I am still just lying in the mess you make/but sweetness you do what you please/this ocean must not know how to do more than settle
I find it strange that I have been dating different versions of the same trauma since I’ve begun. Strange, mostly, that it’s taken me so long to notice. There’s no deep-seated longing for that man, nor any, even the most recent. My body shrugged the heavy weight of him off like an elegy backpack & wasn’t that a surprise. But when I recount the split to yet another person I forgot to update, I find the same lines spilling from my tongue each time. He said I wasn’t ‘worth it.’ I said get out. He ran away to Panama. I’m cleaning up the mess. the mess. the mess.
Of course there is agency in how I invite them in. In how I allow the disaster & then settle in it like a lame dog for years. I’m responsible for what I see about myself. Of course. I want to be the girl who doesn’t stay when told she’s unworthy of kindness. I want to be done with this lesson already. This is what I trace amongst the mountain ranges of my ceiling. When this path consumes me, a gentle fork: I wanted to be done. My therapist reminds me that we’d been discussing my exit plan for too many months. Reminds me that what I’m exposing now is something like joy. In this, I suppose I lied: it wasn’t so much a surprise after all. So here: I’m not sleeping well. Here: I’m no longer held anxious in my driveway every afternoon, wet lungs stalling my walk inside where I might face him.
Things are better.
Sleep is an easy sacrifice.
I’m cleaning up the mess.
Last week I asked myself ::what will nourish this body:: & let it guide me. Fed my hunger stiltedly, I’m sorry, I’m sorry at every mouthful. When asked about apology for hunger I answered hunger. Answered diligent undoing. Answered nothing at all, really. When I felt full to the touch, I cried. I looked at nothing. Drifted back from a sweet sleep in wonder. There is grace in this process.
When I find my way home I turn the light switches off, one by one.
My bedroom is one glowing moment before the house stills & goes dark like the middle of an eye.
