I know my worth, and it is not to be given to the highest bidder, nor to be given to the one mulling over their purchases. It is to be given to the one who has earned my trust and affection.
Self Worth
The Hyacinth Fields (New Graphic)
A Veiled Christmas Tree
The veil was torn, and like a rug pulled from under me, I fell to the ground. Laid out like a corpse for all to see for the first time, I was exposed. You didn’t ask to see me like this, and I didn’t want to show you. I never hid who I was or what I go through, but plucky charisma goes a long way to assuage the burning hell I walk through on a daily basis. Incapacitated, emaciated, gaunt, breath shallow until I smell life and my lungs hold on to that oxygen desperately like a toxic relationship pushing and pulling my chest. My heart working double time to compensate. I wake disoriented to see you in the doorway smiling at me as I come to. Your eyes heartbroken for the both of us. At first, I thought you were a mirage. Something I dreamed of often so when you spoke, and I heard the kind timber of your voice, I was taken back. “Feliz Navidad” you said. A Merry Christmas it was indeed. Maybe this year this was our gift to each other. Pain and tenderness like a Christmas tree’s twinkling glow in the darkness such beauty and life from a plant that was violently severed from its roots oozing sap. Death always smells so sweet when it’s dressed up. I am not dying, but a part of me did that day. The part that checks all lists twice and tries to make everything perfect. No one, especially me, could have predicted this would happen. I could not plan for it. I could not prepare you. My plans go to shit anyway, but at least we would have had a plan. Destiny interceded for us. Like vapor clearing from my eyes you vanished. A plane to catch, a continent between us, you might as well have been a mirage. I could explain away an illusion of my fragmented mind but not a man who leaves. I know I was in good hands my friends rushed in, tapping into what all mothers know and only the ones they love benefit from, the nurturing touch of the scared yet courageous. Makeshift nurses, battle tested, and battle ready. They swarmed me in a frenzy, and you made your exit. All I wanted to know for months was if you would cross that fence you’ve been hugging like the door jam you left. I guess I got my answer. I couldn’t help but think that this was our chance. Your chance to show me what I am to you. In the frenzy, your voice rang out “feel better” before everything went black, and all I heard was the hollow sound of your footsteps walking away. I should hate you for leaving, but I don’t. You did as much as you could. Loved me as much as your heart allowed. Your veil was pierced today too. You could no longer hide behind the Casanova bravado you bolster. You were exposed under the twinkling light of a Christmas tree.
Fear Facing
Nightmares are our worst fears played out in our subconscious so that when they become our reality we can better face them.
Bubble (New Graphic)
Hostile Womb
The doctor asked me if I ever miscarried before. I hadn’t. A virgin can’t miscarry, but he doesn’t get to know that. I’ve known for some time that my clotting disorder would cause inherent dangers with pregnancy. Getting on the pill nearly killed me. No doctor wanted to take the right to have kids from me, but it seems like God already did that for me, to grow the child in my womb, for their blood, to be my blood, to be tethered, bonded, I could stroke, or the baby, and vice versa.
“You have to be careful!”
“You have to plan!”
The male doctor scolded. I quietly nodded my head in agreement, I’m a no kiss virgin! A pro-life advocate who is terrified she will die if she ever gets pregnant. Terrified one day that I will have to make a choice, and I wonder if it will be the right one.
I could gamble with my life, with my baby’s under doctor supervision, be on bed rest, carefully medicated, carefully monitored, risk death for life, trade my life, and maybe gamble for a baby, be the sacrificial vessel my foremothers were. For them, there were no guarantees just blood and death and maybe if they were lucky life. Mothers were expendable, children were reproducible, men were indispensable!
I will never know what it’s like to feel a flutter, a kick, a heartbeat, to feel my baby in utero.
I will never know what it’s like to tell my future husband that we created a life, that his DNA lies inside me that his name will be carried on. I won’t share that special bond of womanhood that shared sense of trauma and pride and celebration. Every baby shower, every child’s one year old birthday party a painful reminder of my hostile womb, my defect, my inadequacy,
I thought about surrogacy. I still wanted to see my smile and my eyes and my curls in another being intermixed with my future husband’s features, but how can I ask another woman to take on the risk I would not ask of my body? How can I have her experience the joy I will never know myself? I’m not sure my body could handle the surge of hormones, or if like the pill that too would kill me. Besides there are no guarantees the same malady that plagues my body would not be encoded in the transferred genes. Should I gamble on such an illness that has nearly killed me 3 times on an innocent child? Maybe they get it, maybe it would be less severe, maybe there would be medical advancements. Do I have a right to play God and upset the natural order of things? I don’t know, and I don’t judge.
And then there is adoption and foster children, and stepchildren, and no children that too is an option. Will I even be healthy enough to raise children? Will I love my chosen children? Will they love me? Will I still feel a twinge of phantom pain in my hostile womb of ghosts of unborn babies dreams I was born to have, and dreams that were miscarried. I know I will love my children if I have them however they come, but that love will come with pain. It is my prayer that they never see it, my prayer that they will be loved unconditionally far beyond blood ties, my prayer when they seek their own womb mothers and seed fathers that I will embrace their journey with grace and openness and not the hostility that so many adoptive children are torn between their family and their biology. It is my prayer that my love for my children is not sabotaged by my hostile womb or my pride both are deadly to an innocent babe.
Wind Blown
I want to live in the majesty of the mountains, and the mystery of the forest, and the quietness of the desert, and the soothing ebb of the beach. Wherever the wind blows that is where I want to go!
Adam and Eve
Adam, what was it like to dust off God’s creation, and breathe out God’s spent magic? Eve, what was it like to be weaved from Adam’s rib? For the Creator to say the universe is not complete until you exist? To know that you were such a masterpiece that God had to rest on the seventh day? And God wasn’t the only one, Adam was well pleased too. I sit here in awe trying to picture Eden. I admit my imagination as wild as it is cannot begin to comprehend the mysticism of your home. I wonder how long you got to live there? How long you go to live in the perfect oasis? How long you lived in harmony with God and man and nature and beast? The animals you saw the plants that you were surrounded with. You wanted for nothing. Your life was simple and easy. I wake up every morning envious knowing what it feels like to struggle. I struggle to provide for myself. I struggle to take care of my family. I struggle to be happy. The only thing that drives me is the hope of heaven. That one day I could get back to what you lost in Eden, but you did not know what hope was. There was no word for hope. Every need every desire was satiated. You were only asked one task, one simple task. Why would you give that up? Tell me what was it about the serpent that was so convincing? Eve, you plucked the fruit; you gave it to Adam. Adam, you knew God’s command. You could have stopped this whole act. You both defied God. You cursed Man and Woman and separated them from God. You caused tremendous undo suffering for generations to come, and I do not blame you. For what it’s worth, I forgive you. If the roles were reversed, I would eat the fruit too. Sometimes, my greed, my selfishness, my darkness bubbles to the surface, and I think we were given a choice to follow the desires of our heart it is the nature of man, and it makes me incredibly angry at God to give mankind such power… such responsibility! We are naive children in the garden, and He knew the consequences of sin. He knew the consequences of biting that pomegranate. We didn’t. We were easily fooled. We let ourselves be easily fooled. Well, did you know? Please, tell me you were fooled?! Please, tell me you did not know the consequences of your actions. That you did not consciously decide to thrust this cursed knowledge on us. Adam, when God found you in the garden and you hid, did you not think God could find you? What was the feeling of shame like for the first time? You went from being this carefree exhibitionist to being the most uncomfortable person in their own skin. I was born into a world that is quick to shame others to deflect from the inner shame they feel. A wound I feel that you are familiar with. I would love to know what it’s like to be free from the undo bondage of being ashamed of the very creation of who you are. Adam, when God clothed you and cast you out of Eden, were you grateful or bitter? Did you feel it was justified? Did you feel God bestowed kindness on you or was too harsh? God didn’t leave you in your shame, and he could have. He could have destroyed you and the universe that He created, but he didn’t. He allowed for redemption. Who knew it would take so long? Eve, you still had the task of birthing humanity, and it was going to be bloody and painful, and these two beautiful boys came out. You loved them. You nurtured them. You tried to raise them right. You tried to warn them to not make the mistakes you made. Did you weep bitterly when you heard the news about Cane and Abel? Did you blame yourself? Did you think it was the curse you brought on them? What was it like to watch the sin you started perpetuating in your children? Did you believe they could be saved? Did you have hope? Is that what you worked so hard in the fields for Adam? Would you have raised them differently if you could? Adam, Eve, Why do you think God allowed us to live in a fallen world? To till the earth, to populate it, to take care of the animals, to build, civilizations, and empires, to create, and innovate, and then recreate? There are wars and famines, mass extinction, and diseases that destroy humanity and the earth at large, and what mankind does to our fellow man is the worst atrocity murder, rape, incest, genocide just to name a few. Your children were proof you had hope. You carried on. You continued to worship God faithfully even after punishment. Why? Was Eden really that glorious? Is it worth fighting for? Is God worth fighting to have a relationship with? You knew Him best! You knew Him from the beginning. Adam, He spoke you into being. Eve, He twisted your body out of bone that used to be dust that used to be words. Adam your words still exhale God’s residue. Eve, your bones were touched by God’s Hand’s. You knew the Creator intimately, and when He cast you out of the garden, the relationship changed as all relationships do after betrayal, so I am hesitant. I am unworthy; I am a sinner. I follow in your footsteps and your ways of destruction. All I know is just as you have been created so have I. I caused my mother a great deal of blood and pain and tears; and when God breathed life into my lungs, I cried. I struggle to find my place in this world. So many of your feelings: shame, bitterness, sadness, undeserved love. I feel them too. Brother, Sister, we are kindred. You are me and I am you. *1 Inspired by Genesis Chapter 1-4 in the New International Version of the Bible
Home Depot
I came home from the hospital to a house full of renovations stuck in the living room facing my front door. I could not even make it upstairs to my bedroom, to my own bed. Every time I heard a knock at the door; I did not know if the person on the other side was a nurse, or a physical therapist, or a contractor.
I got used to strange men invading my space, and they got used to me to the point that I might as well have been wall paper, another fixture of the house that they were fixing up. They got used to my wheelchair and my hospital bed. They even got used to my physical therapist coming in and out though admittedly that took some getting used to. Men do not like to idly sit by if they detect a hint of pain, and healing is slow and torturous much like renovating a house.
When you do finish, there are worries. Will the pipe burst again? Will I stroke out again? Is this the one that will kill me? It’s a valid question, and you can do everything right, and everything can still go wrong. No one knows the future. When God calls you home, when nature sweeps your house under a flash flood, no amount of assurances, can ease the grief of losing everything you hold dear.
After the dust settles, and the workers are gone, and the new wallpaper is up, or better yet, shiplap because wallpaper is so 1980’s, and you are starting fresh again. You have to start living, appreciating what was, and what now is. You have to live in that house and that new body. You have to make a new life, have to look everyday in the mirror at the body that survived in the house that was remade. There were so many rapid changes. Will I and the house hold up to the test of time? That is the question that haunts me in the back of my mind where my blood clot used to reside.
All I know is this that houses are meant to be lived in and lives are meant to be lived out. I have the good fortune for a second, third, fourth chance I may not get another. The pressure to live it out is so intense. When time is borrowed; time is cherished. I’m scared of losing more time. I’m scared of wasting it on minutia that in the long run does not matter. Scared I missed too much time recovering as I watched too many of my loved ones live their lives and do what I am not able as I recover. I want to live! I want to enjoy life! Every moment!
My vision of the ideal life may change. It may be forced to change as much as my home was renovated. Those who have thwarted death as many times as I have know how to adapt. Know how to shed their skin, to shed organs, shed blood, shed tears, shed whatever we need to survive. We are survivors after all.
At some point, we would like to come home. Let me rephrase. At some point, we would like to feel at home in our houses and our bodies. To feel at ease and warm as if under the covers of our childhood beds. To feel the smile that’s so familiar from that story heard one too many times at the family dinner table. To feel like the door can be shut and our breath can be caught. To just breathe. To feel your breath in and out, in and out again. How glorious are your Lungs?! To trust that they will work and will keep working. What a glorious day when I can trust my body again. When I can come home to my body. Be one with my body whether it works properly or not.
The Collective
Bubble
We are all in our own little bubble. Head down, trying to stay out of trouble. When I look up and out through my dingy dirty lens at you, It’s like a breath of fresh air. I wonder what you must see as the light filters in and through your crystal clear bubble out towards mine. I wonder if I could see more clearly if our bubbles combined through osmosis, cleansing the dirt from my shell like it is soap. None of these thoughts matter because I am trapped behind these tinged transparent walls. Unable to touch, to feel the world that surrounds me, to be free of my overcrowded intrusive mind. You granted me a kindness I have nary received from a stranger. You looked at me. Not in my direction or around my convex concavities but actually at me. Your gaze, it pierced through my veiled armor, through yours creating a bridge between our souls where a second seemed infinite though it was not more than a second. You laid yourself bare risking a silent rejection: A roll of the eyes, a darting eye, a back turned. They are so commonplace in our world that when someone matches our gaze even for a moment, our bubble shatters, like the fat lady’s glass belting out her hallelujah. Even though you left, your kindness sticks with me like platelets healing up a wound this world inflicted. No longer invisible no longer dirty. Just the best part of humanity shining for a moment. Like a ray of sun parting from the heavens giving us hope on a storm soaked day.
Hyacinth Hale Poetry 