Part One:
One of my organs hurts
Me from the inside.
I try to move, to show you where,
But you tell me to see a doctor.
Part Two:
I hold the pills
That He prescribed
Ever mighty, firm.
I take them slow, I take with food.
I wait for the pain to soften.
Part Three:
I sit, no pills.
Today I will breathe.
I approach the pain anew.
I sit, no pills.
/michal
Does it help
To be read by poems?
To be understood only through words
With no direct structure or argumentation.
A point made, muddled by your mouth,
As your lips form the words to comfort
Your darkness.
/michal
I took my pulse
To my childhood home
To expose it to old smells.
I breathed into the spirometer
Checking for my capacity
To contain the world inside.
I left your thermometer of happiness
Under my tongue for too long:
It has dissolved
And the mercury is leaking.
I guess I’ll never know how
Exactly
I am doing.
I took an oral history
By talking to myself
And clarifying the words that I didn’t
Quite catch.
Could I repeat that last part?
Hmm.
And how long has this been going on?
I tried to measure myself
To know who I am,
To have a language to express it to others.
But the numbers have failed me
And I am left with broken instruments
And healing bones.
/michal
Of course I am spinning around
still
in my own little circle, but why
can’t I stop?
I can’t see
the world around me.
It does not keep up with my speed
Like my hands
Which I see clearly (spinning with me).
But the world, a blur.
Let me slow down
And see my reflection
And breathe in sync with her lungs.
I had a small doll once
(With silvery blue hair)
And her hands were sewn together
To make a loop for her knees
To tuck into.
She would sit there and hug herself
And that is all she did.
/michal
On our last night you asked me
What I didn’t like about my body.
I got frustrated
(Too many things to list)
Why would anyone ask that?
You wanted to kiss all the parts
I didn’t like
Until I would like them.
So I named a few parts
And you put your head under the sheets
And kissed them until I fell asleep.
Today I want to tell you
Which parts I don’t like
(The parts my father pointed out to me)
But you aren’t here to kiss me any longer.
(Let me heal myself)
/michal
I tie my fingers together to look lucky.
The bones are soft,
cooperative.
Yes,
I am here and yes,
I just noticed
that I am.
Yes,
I am softer than my bones,
depleted,
I am full.
Returning, I try
to glide
to roll
to twirl into my body,
I fill.
/michal
I am tumbling through my internal organs
Looking for a sweet
spot
soft
enough to cushion my own punches
from within.
I bounce from wall to wall and from tissue to t-
-issue
Unable to internalize my own self
Unable to integrate into my own being
Smoothly enough that I might feel whole,
Quickly enough that I might not get lost
In dissolution.
/michal
meet me in the common room 