Poetry: Shame’s Carapace
I wrote this after an EMDR session about shame around my abuse in November 2016. Now the black hole opens wideand a red-headed silent screamplunges, blurry and life shaken,until the empty darknesssplashes into blackest sea.Slowly, unresisting, she sinksto suffocation and nothingness. “No!” my watching soul cries,reaching useless misty armsto lift to life againto the surface. […]
The Gift of the Ungrateful Appendix, Part 1: Thanksgiving
“Can you die of gas?” I cried out, crawling on hands and knees from the bathroom – the least uncomfortable position for my bloated and painful belly. If my housemate, Linda, replied, I did not hear. She was moving with deliberate speed to package up herself and her 5 year old granddaughter to haul me […]
Starry, Starry Night
Awake in the middle of the long winter night, I shed the cocoon of my sleeping bag, layer on fleece and snow boots, and emerge from my tent. I crunch slowly across the snow, alpine ridges rising around me washed silver and black by moonlight. My breath smokes in the zero degree air. Turning around […]