The view from inside

Notebook, 1993

I wanted to suffer quietly and beautifully
but suffering is noisy and deformed
it spits on the sidewalks in front of innocent
bystanders and it makes no apologies
it wipes its nose on its sleeve and it whines
for sympathy it licks the hands of the compassionate
it howls over a broken fingernail
everything reminds it that it exists everything
mocks its existence everything convinces it that it
is ugly it is a freak at a freak show it is
the rotting leftover shoved in the back of
the refrigerator and it makes everything smell
as its final biting and weeping vengeance that
it exists at all.
Apparently quiet and lovely sufferers exist
I've never met one but this is what I am supposed
to be instead I have made myself obvious and
now the fingers are pointed at me.

Art therapy, 1993

In a time of universal deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.
--George Orwell

Lucky

I want to tell a story, before I get lost in the telling.

She does not see herself at the age of 43, wounded, in crash position on a black leather couch in the front room of a Victorian townhouse.  She does not see the gauze curtains that protect her from the curiosity of passersby, or the Klimt prints on the wall, or the gas fireplace that is never on.   She does not hear the howls of pain and rage, does not feel her own hand slap her face, over and over again, while a voice asks her to stop.  She does not yet know how lucky she is, because she cannot remember how unlucky she has been.

No one other than her much liked the dog.  He had a bit of a temper and he liked to pee on the basement carpet—damning traits in the eyes of the others.  But although he’d nipped her once on the face, she never told.  He was her best friend.

“You want to do this,” the witch whispered into her ear.  “His love is only for the worthy.”

But she did not want his love.  She wanted only for the old woman in the crinkly clothes  and who smelled so badly of lavender powder to let her go.  Let me go.

He always knew in which hand she held his ripped, tattered yellow ball with the nobbles, even when she held the ball behind her back.  It made her laugh.  She thought he was a genius.

“His name was Lucky,” she told him.  “Lucky the unlucky dog.”  Her boyfriend laughed, so she did too.  Because she was still only 19.  She would not be 43 for a long, long time.

Confusion, 1981

Diary entry, June 7, 2001

I chose to come here.

But the sadness

            the sadness...

It crackles.

No one told me, you know.

Heaven