I open my kitchen blinds and gape at the hawk, perched on the garden lamp at the edge of my lawn. She notices everything with those prehistoric, ravening eyes, like two old stars, charged with origin stories far more savage than mine. She isn’t here to sing— She’s here to scream— To tear meat from…
Winter drops the late afternoon sun into my bedroom window just after three o’clock. He hovers there— burning the edges of my closed curtains like an eclipse I can touch. He says, you have to invite me in, which I find charming. My palms hover over the fabric, pin-holed from cats, reminding me of that…
If there’s one thing that recovering alcoholics excel at it’s self-flagellation. Maybe it’s not just recovering alcoholics, but any one of us mid-way through life’s journey lost in a dark wood. It seems the first thing we ask is what can I change? Should I lose weight. Read more. Travel. Fix up the house. Find…
The last time I tried to get sober, I remember feeling elated at my almost 6-month milestone. I felt then like one might expect I would feel today. But I don’t. Don’t get me wrong, I am grateful for the strength that allowed me to arrive at this day, but my celebration is tempered by…
Your sleek, black body pressed on the stucco wall in my backyard should have frightened me, Latrodectus— But instead I felt like I did as a child, crunching through the woods, achingly aware of things greater than myself. I made your acquaintance then, discovering that you go days without breathing, you bond to vertical surfaces,…
It’s been awhile since I’ve checked in here so I simply wanted to say hello and extend my love and well wishes. I just passed my four month mark! I’m absolutely counting the days of course, but not with the same measure of desperation as I was in the beginning. I am still trying to…
Another milestone today. I approach this one with a little more reckless joy than the last, but I’m still too afraid to dive headlong into the deep of celebration. I trust that trepidation though so I’m honoring it. I’ve been selfish of late. Eating right, exercising, indulging all the whims of my weirdness. Amazon packages…
Today was full of ups and downs and I can’t decide if all of it or none of it had anything to do with my disease. But I’ll leave out (at least for the time being) all the very painful, very personal components and focus solely on the good. I made my first home office…
Milestone day has arrived, though it comes with a lingering, whopper of a cold and a broken coffee maker. O, the humanity! But more than 60 days ago, I wouldn’t even have cared about having coffee and I would already be sick. So, dang it, I am thrilled to make this report today! I almost…
“just bear in mind that sickness is the means by which an organism frees itself from what is alien; so one must simply help it to be sick, to have its whole sickness and to break out with it, since that is the way it gets better. In you, so much is happening now; you must be patient like someone who is sick, and confident like some one who is recovering; for perhaps you are both.”
Sobriety Poet 