Undecided Basket Case

  There’s a rage within me. Isn’t it funny the power we hold when decisions narrow? I’ve always been good in a corner. Maybe this all happened because for a moment I was less desperate, though the end result is not so. It’s ugly and clawing, like the spasming of a felled doe. I’d much rather be the one to shoot the arrow. There’s this tar stuck to my kindness. Kindness survives. Even when teeth are bared and knuckles white. An anguish tainted fealty. Loyalty to something that may continue on when I have not felt it so easy.  In friendship there’s safety, in softness a place to land and grow. I still value these things. But I’d like to be so viscerally angry that my eyes set ablaze. That my heart becomes fire rather than this sputtering dying thing. I don’t think survival has to be pretty. But to be warm, to dream. Rather than to sleep.  Thanks Shakes. I think I smoke to not only remember the dead but to die. I realised that looking at my knife. He said he learnt to enjoy ...

My favorite word: visceral  Old women are beautiful. I’m in the emergency department today. Ironically, not an emergency. I’m one of those bane on the system types, but my gp told me to come in so here I sit. The seats are blue and grey. It feels like they always are but I can’t remember the amount of times I’ve been in one of these. An old lady is telling her loved one that her friend fell, she says not to worry. She glances at her friend and says: it was quite a way to make a statement. She laughs, not strained, but free. Not callous, just gentle in the only joy that can be found when acceptance is well and truly past. They gossip after the phone call is done. Talking about daughters and mother hens. There’s a beauty in that I think. I’ve watched people assume that the elderly are resigned. Like it’s sad. But I watch her laugh and natter and I don’t see it anywhere. I love aging. I feel more solid every year. Not compacted to the point of unchanging, or drowning an inner child, j...