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The yearly drive to the shoreline. In contrast to last year, I haven't been awake for two days. My energy isn't depleted nor are my defenses rubbed raw. I don't see the windshield--having then been installed mere hours before hitting the road--as a metaphor for my emotional susceptibility. Instead, I'm mostly numbed by a year-long haze of pain ( Read more... )

My first gig, as it turns out, is a former home. New Orleans. Eighteen years, to the day, since packing up the brief life that my former partner and I had unfurled within a debilitated city. That ledge, the edge toward a chasm of unfathomable depth. One of many unresolved losses. A darkness I dredged and, for years, didn't know I stilll dragged ( Read more... )

Wind to dry out the flood. Cold to freeze what remains ( Read more... )

My best friend is getting married today, and my little (adopted) brother is drowning deeper under depression ( Read more... )

A renewed attempt at mobility: crutches outside. The metallic extensions allow me to focus on the left leg's calf and the right leg's thigh. Balancing through isolation. Strengthening through simulation. I'd used this approach before, during the summer, back when I thought I was just about to return to work. Back when I was fueled by caffeine ( Read more... )

In the troughs. The lowest point between peaks. There's a prospect of being pulled upward, back to the heights behind me, but the possibility isn't a guarantee. But there could just as well be no upswing. This current iteration of life might be the new baseline. Endless flatlands. A steady decline. But my metaphor clings to the laws of ( Read more... )

The echoes of waves have extended now for two and a half months. Part of me is still in the water, out beyond the sandbar, listing from to one side to another. The storm that had rolled in overhead wasn't the normal water cycle but something temporal; pausing certain elements and extending others. Extending beyond endlessness. Letting the rest ( Read more... )

With no preamble, my mind tells me: Today is the last day for the medication. Even though the bottomless bottle still rattles with an expectation to "take until complete," I have to pause this endless stream of chemistry ( Read more... )