Month: December 2018

The Ghost and The Moon

by Lindsay, posted in poetry, writing 
I dreamt of a ghost beyond my window, 
Standing at the edge of my yard,
Translucent below the marble moon. 

She stood erect beneath the formidable night sky.
With an upward tilt of her head, hair grazing her waist,
She stared the bald moon back with her vehement gaze.
When I opened my own eyes, I was under the sky.
Color in my cheeks and blood in my veins,
Dewy-grass feet firmly in the dirt.

And so I walked inside to dream of a blank sky. 
Not unlike the blackboards the morning of Sunday school:
Washed clean, ready and inviting.



For so many weeks, months, I felt haunted. Everywhere I went, every experience, was a reminder of what had happened. That I was not who I used to be and I was not who I wanted to be. That I had made mistakes and simply did not measure up. I was empty.

I don’t know exactly when it happened or how it happened, but I felt life breathed back into me, or maybe I breathed it into myself. Perhaps it was simply that enough time had passed. (And perhaps I had just written enough poems).

It is funny how simple things can represent complete opposites depending on the experiences occupying our headspace. The moon, for example, represented something that I felt saw right through me, something that followed me no matter where I went. It was watching me and I could not escape it. Now I am again able to look at it with a sense of wonder.

It is simply the moon and it is beautiful.

How I Feel About You

by Lindsay, posted in poetry

Do not ask me how I feel about you,
Because I cannot answer that.
 
Instead ask me what I feel.
I feel warm sunlight.
 
Ask me how much I feel.
I feel the number of leaves on the gingko tree behind my
old Cambridge apartment.
 
There were warm, calm days spent across six summers looking up
from my hammock through endless spirals of leaves catching
glimmers of dancing sunshine.
 
The memory of those days feels the same,
As the way that I feel about you.

Shrimp and Needles

by Lindsay, posted in poetry

For dinner you had shrimp and needles with a side of word salad,

After reaching for the cat that kept ringing because you couldn’t slice the light.

All the while your scissors aren’t keeping your foot warm because it’s not feel good.

And you use a clock for it’s 11:35.

And the time is good and it is today.

And you are here because you are not hungry right now.

And you are here because you are with me.

And you are here because your brain is bad.

And the boys drove cars over houses, so they jump over houses with their cars.

I don’t know.

I love you.

I’ll cook you later.

https://www.asha.org/public/speech/disorders/aphasia/

The Fall

by Lindsay, posted in poetry, writing

Golden flame leaves against piercing blue sky

Through the window I stare

From my bed.

I label colors, objects.

I label with language. Language which has no emotion.

I stare through my window for hours

As lifetimes pass me by.

157,680,000 seconds

or minutes?

Through my veiling shroud I cannot read the clock or feel the weather that would hit my face if I mustered strength enough to throw open the window as I would’ve done six months ago.

(Thrown open the window to feel the

joy of sunshine, the jubilation of wind

on cool skin, the serene content of

sapphire sky.)

I lay still.

I label.

tree

yellow

sun

sky

My language has no emotion. My language has no actions.

My words have shapes, but I cannot touch them.

They have textures that I cannot feel.

(I recall a time when yellow sun

took the form of arms wrapping

around skin. The texture is joy,

belonging, hope, content.)

My language is words is perception as seen through a screen

through a screen

through a screen

Muted distortion.

Though just yesterday my sorrowful thoughts jabbed a dozen dull needles into my stomach.

Jab is action.

Sorrowful is emotion.

Today

bed

blanket

window

branch

twig

roof

gutter

I don’t know if I ever experienced a day lived absently looking through my window like a few of the days I lived this fall. I am a couple months past these days now. I wrote this looking back on the most poignant day, the height of the worst you could say. If you have these days now, I feel you.