jayus
“We have to endure the discordance between imagination and fact. It is better to say, “I am suffering,” than to say, “This landscape is ugly.”
I’ve been wet with mucus, sweat, blood, and tears for days. It won’t stop. My throat hurts—my body aches. I have phantom pangs of my vagus nerve being flicked during my IUD replacement. From nipple to pubis, it feels like lightning in my body. I shower every hour to cool my skin and let my hair drip against the floor. I’ve wrapped myself in an oversized knit sweater. I smell like a lily. My tears are rainbows. I catch them in my palms and count the colors.
Red.
Pain is the precursor to transformation. I’m shedding like the church in piles of rubble outside my apartment. The walls were torn down by mold. The decomposition occurs through the inside; no external forces could force the decay like an inner disease. La Sagrada Familia. The cathedral in the middle of Barcelona has a Samsung ad placed at its peak. In the center, where the heart should be. It’s the first thing you see; a mobile device surrounded by stone peaks and little people pouring from its gaping mouth.
Yellow.
Doorways are portals. I passed through a gate on December 24, 1987, at 7:01 AM into a woman’s arms who wanted to call me Carrie Anne. My Father and grandparents smoked in the hospital hallways as the doctor fished me out with a hook. Someone tucked a peppermint candy in my swaddle and presented me to my parents in a hat that matched the blood seeping from the bedding to the floor. Postpartum hemorrhage—never be the first to leave the party.
Pink.
You cannot rush the process; everything forced is formulaic. I am not like the doctor who induced my mother. I do not want a wand to stick into the source. I choose to move with the sacred; I surrender control.
Green.
I have done the same activity before bed for as long as my memories allow me to go backward. Read. I converse with the dead to settle the angst of the living. I am curled up on the floor with a book propped on my chest, pondering the sentences strung together by someone with courage.
Purple.
It takes a resilient heart to create, to expose the beasts through brute honesty. An artist must be sincere. Without the will to reveal what we will not see, the creator suffers from ego. I close my eyes to drink from a cocktail of frogs, fireflies, and moths—these little critters of transformation.
Orange.
I become the crinum lilies with fleshy fuchsia heads. I am toxic; you cannot touch the bulb with bare fingers. It's where its heart is. Poetry is my sun; it makes the wetlands sparkle.
Blue.
It is a great gift to appreciate without grasping.
Listen,
I Can Sing A Rainbow To You.
Photo source.
