writing

1

My brain fools my body into believing it is always in pain
It is a trickster.
Or perhaps, less malevolent;
a nervous dog which barks at shadows because of some
unknown violence in a previous life

When the brain can no longer bear the pain alone, it holds it out
to the body.
A problem shared is a problem halved.
Except really, it is doubled.

And if you are the dog, the shadows might as well be people.
They are just as threatening.

So the body has to decide. Does it follow the path of least
resistance – sacrifice its own desires, to attend the brain,
(a thrall to its survival drive)
to keep noise at a minimum?
Or, does it go on regardless, knowing that every borrowed
movement will be paid for with considerable interest?

Each month I visit somebody.
She slides my vertebrae back into alignment like puzzle tiles,
Kneads apart the cobwebs of fascia adhering skin to muscle
She tidies the messy fallout of a home in constant tension
both of us knowing that in a month she will find another one.

We have, in time, become familiar with the foibles of my body.
How she clenches deadlines into her shoulders and family
arguments into her diaphragm.
Before pain there was no need to know.
We were quiet coworkers.

Then she got loud
I tried not to hear but she would not be ignored
became the antagonist;
a nemesis I could never defeat or escape.

The doctors told me:
‘if you give in to the pain then you let it win.
You must get up every day and tell the pain that it isn’t real, that
it has no purpose.’
But it did.

My body is a bubbling pot full of steam with no vent for release.

All villains have tragic origins.

Where there is steam there is always heat.

Nobody could ever interpret the message silently wailed in that
unintelligible language of pain.
Not even me.

2

I heard the body once described as an oracle.
Mine is a scrying pool
reflecting the immediate, and behind that, the blurry silhouettes
of other lives, endlessly shifting and merging.
It shows my mother, her sisters. Their mother.
Their wincing faces meld with mine until I can no longer tell the
difference between us.

A long-dormant psychic splinter under the skin
works its way to the surface until it breaks through.
And we, the priestesses of pain
nurse the wound of twenty generations.

Some people have children to avoid their hurt – the one their
parents gave them –
fill their lives with responsibility until that dark and uninviting
corner is obscured from view.
But it is still there, and inside the womb
it sows seeds that grow silently in the dark
into creeping vines with insidious roots.

A garden that is slightly overgrown can be easily ignored,
but once the foliage begins to consume everything, there
comes a reckoning. We are forced to choose:
To be swallowed up until we can no longer see the sunlight.
To try and contend with the vines, cutting back each regrowth
as it appears,
an eternal stalemate, a cohabitation.
Or, starting at the centre, patch by tiny patch,
to pull each one out by the root.
To create a small clearing that slowly expands
So that we might dig our hands into the dirt
and feel what lies below

And just like grief it rises up and swallows you like a dark red
wave
When you are minding your own business
Trying to forget that something terrible happened
That maybe you didn’t even know was terrible
At the time or maybe even now

Every cell recalls something that was taken from it and your
muscles twitch and spasm against the descending heaviness
and you cling desperately on to ignorance

But the body knows
It remembers
One day you will reach into your coat pocket
and find a knot tied in your hankie and you won’t know how it
got there
or when and it will haunt you every time you reach for some
change
Too tight to unravel

And then one day another knot
And another
Until it doesn’t look like itself anymore
You can’t see the initials embroidered in the corner

If you were to take the time to pry loose every knot
would it ever be the same?
Stretched into a strange rhombus
edges fraying. Creases like ley lines
Imprints of where nerves converged
But still
the silhouette of an old stain

What happens after that red wave finally breaks
and retreats back from the shore
What is left behind on the sodden sand
Is there treasure –
fragments of cargo from a voyage vanished before its intended
destination?

Will you gather them up
Sift through rock pools (as tiny crabs scuttle back to shady
cover)
And lay them to dry on the beach
And decide that they were meant for you, after all
Swept away
Bruised by jagged rocks
just so that they could land at your feet