I recognize you
See the angels now
You’re blue
The leftovers of an
Overdose
Dirt clings to your creases
I pull your hallucination
Over my ears like headphones
This game of telephone
Defines us
Draw me back
Like blood in a syringe
Water from a
Crack-house sink
Dripping
Here are my pieces,
Spare parts
A final testament
A grape of promise
To roll around my tongue
Bitter wine of time and distance
An oblation to our language
You’ll be thrilled to know, (maybe thrilled is too strong an emotion, seeing as how I am simply font on a screen, but, a girl can dream…) I carried out my first insanely awkward phone call with “Sponse” today. One more task I managed to complete, solely due to my grateful attitude and willingness to turn my life over to a higher power.
I know, I sound like one of those preachy meditation “reading-of-the-day” pages. Roll your eyes all you want…I sure as hell used to. I’ll be honest though, when I was the person busy rolling my eyes, I was also the person who couldn’t fathom how other people were chaining even a couple 24 hour periods of sobriety together. And don’t even try to tell me you had any clean time exceeding 30 days because I knew for a fact that you couldn’t (not if you used like me, anyway).
Anyhoo…I just wanted to share that tidbit. Sponse asked me to call her again tomorrow so now I have another 24 hour period to stress myself out over the next phone call. You know what’s funny – I was never this anxious about calling a complete stranger so that I could cop (for all the normies that translates to: get whatever substance I was looking for).
Curious, isn’t it?? How my disease is so cunning that it even twists a little phone call into an amazingly complicated escapade? It’s no wonder that I need a Sponse around!!
On that note, here’s to another day clean and sober! Cheers! (Inappropriate, funny or both?!)
Captivity has taken to me
State time…
I qualified
And you,
You haggard psych
Absently fondle a phantom goatee
What medicine will blunt the
Edges of my mania, Doc?
You speak in potions
I speak in puddles
A muddled distraction of moderation
(What a great suggestion)
I’ll attempt to color the grey area
Without falling in
As you can see – I can spell “world”
Backwards and the people I
Talk to are me
The voices I hear are my own
Unquiet mind;
Torrid flutter
My rage is simple:
You advise me to disclose
With no intention of a cure.
To quickly recap what’s been going on: I was accepted into a long term in-patient addiction treatment center whose primary purpose is to help women with DCYF involvement reunify with their children. I’ve been in the program for a little over a month and a half and have earned Level 2, which allows me to have my cell phone at certain hours, have overnights with my kids, attend AA/NA meetings off premises, and go on day passes on the weekend.
Just so you know, these privileges haven’t come without some challenges!! My DCYF case worker has a control issue and fights to assert her control over the programs guidelines. I earned overnights with the kids and day passes which allowed me to take them to the local library and shopping for toys at the stores right across the street. In order to prove her overwhelming power over my situation she denied my pass privileges if I wanted to see the kids. I have to give up the small semblance of freedom I’ve earned if I want to spend time with my kids. Obviously, I gave up my passes.
Tonight, me and another woman from the program went out to an AA meeting. I have been talking about needing a sponsor in order to begin step work which is the “meat and potatoes” of the program, if you will. Tonight I prayed before we left for the meeting, asking my higher power to guide me and give me the courage to actually ask another woman for her number. I was heard and found myself pulling my cell phone out and typing in the name and number of a woman who can help me along in my recovery.
Now I’m sitting at the transit station waiting for the bus that will take us back to the program…I have an accomplished feeling moseying about me. I even set an alarm on my phone that will serve as a reminder to call my sponsor everyday, as directed by said “sponse”. My duties for the day have just about been fulfilled.
When I get home, I will take the time to thank my higher power for hearing me and helping me. Then, I will ask for the fearlessness to actually press the “send” button when it comes time for me to make the phone call tomorrow. It’s important that I also remember to thank my higher power for our connection. For some people, the act of surrendering ones will and life to a power greater than themselves is fantastically difficult and they are unable to grasp the AA/NA programs because of it.
The main thing I have been reminded to do in this program (sometimes I forget the simplest of tasks due to my many “vacations” to rehab centers) is to remain grateful! I find that anytime I am in a horrid mood or it feels as though some dark otherworldly shadow has blanketed my entire space, it is due to an ungrateful attitude.
long story short, I am grateful today!
It’s an infinite descent
Below the naval
Below the toes
Below the roots
She peers over the crumbling crust
Pieces plummet
Flake and fall
She should let go
Betray the stutter of safety
She falls as though she’s the first card in a
Vegas shuffle
Her faith follows, then, passes her
This wasn’t what she pictured
This was never the plan
It opens as though bursting from a cocoon
Wings spread like petals hungry for the sun
Capture her flailing form
I slough off the week
Each restless second evaporates
And what is left are the putrid remains of
Anticipation
Too long, I’ve waited
My breath the only measure of
Moments passing
I should learn to cope with more finesse
In the meantime,
The finish line mocks
a few exhalations from where I stand
Will I ever grasp the concept of a race
Run solely on stamina’s stillness?
She was drawn
Wrinkles clung to her face from the static
electricity from expectation’s simmer
Too enthusiastic in the wake of
Shifts, climbs and the inevitable fall
Then, to wade recklessly
Sink below the places she imagined
Her shoe might latch
That’s the way and weight of it
Tonight, though, small talk
Walked her to the shifty shore
Allowed for breath to be caught; admired
She writes again
A simple satisfaction
quiet within quells the
Silence of her hand until a
finger begins to trace in the sand
Expression abounds somehow
I see her
Suspended an arms length above
Light as a feather, stiff as a board
Buoyant with Powders and potions
Powerful enough to rip the stakes out of her restraints
Allow her to float away
I point my finger in an accusatory tone
(after all, they’ll ask whose fault it was)
And use my front teeth to rip a sliver of skin from it
A tawdry souvenir
Like the sheets she relinquished her lungs upon
I call for her to descend
Put her feet back on the ground
Remind her that she’s forgotten something
Who left me in charge anyway??
There’s the true culprit
A sterile hospital wall is our only division
Erect, we hover over infants in their death incubators
Commune with our own conceptions of Whoever is responsible
Whisper life-saving affirmations
We breathe slowly,
In this place beyond oxygen,
Without gravity
our occupancy
lengthens the brevity of each idle second simply because we’ve held fast to a small semblance of our own mortality
We remain in this trancelike state until
God has tallied the scorecards,
Justice has weighed our transgressions
The scales have blindly spoken
Her scream penetrated me in the most intimate manner
At first, Clarity confounded me
As it leaked from behind my eyes
I began to choke on the stillness
Straight from her now quiet newborns chest
It reverberates through my vocal chords
For a second, I could’ve sworn the death
Announcement was mine
Those piercing shrieks were mine
For reasons that transcend
Affluence and privilege;
The sparse momentos people like me hold Delicately, fearful they might shatter and our entire concept of faith would
go on to be lost with them…..
We are so blissfully unsure of consciousness
Or what establishes one
as one which thrives
While another nuzzles into its own suicidal delicacy and capitulates
Either way, the clatter between my ears
Settles and I’m useless to tame
My feverish inquiries
“If each petition is lifted into
The celestial sphere with the exact same
Rhythm, why was mine blessed enough to remain written?”
I could only hope to convince myself
She would cope, learn to occupy a certain numbness,
Overlap it’s silent provocation with the
Sort of indulgent memorial typical
When burying your first born before the
Momentum even commenced.
Truth Scerum 