by Tess McInnis
“Did you see these pretty flowers your kids brought?” I nodded to shut her up. It didn't work.
“These are my favorites” as she points to a mixed bouquet of wild flowers, picks them up and sniffs. The niceness ant grabs the black cow and kind of shakes it at me saying “moo,” smiling and putting it back down. The doctor walks in. He is not alone. Standing next to this new doctor is an old one. It is one I warmly remember, but don't remember why. My brain is fuzzy and heavy from too much pain medications. The new doctor is the serious counterpart of the niceness ant. He says “Hello” and proceeds to read my charts with academic ability, perhaps even for memorization of a test later on. The other doctor comes directly and steadfast to my side, to my hand, and even kisses my forehead. I find it odd a doctor would kiss my forehead.
“Oh my God, I am so glad you are back” he says and continues “don't you worry about anything. Just rest and recover .I am here for you....we all are, we love you so much” I flinch and hold back a loud emotion surfacing. Seriously...my head is screaming “What the fuck?' over and over. Is this a twisted dream? Am I even awake? What the fuck is this guy saying? Doing? I need to think...I turn my head away quickly to the window. He backs away surprised. He recognizes his overkill. Silence. The new doctor and niceness nurse are trapped in this moment too. No one says a thing. Awkward recognition of an unrecognized scene. The new doctor clears his throat to put something into the air. And then he speaks of my injuries. Half I hear, still window shopping for memory. I hear knife wounds, and a giggle escapes me. Then another. They are all staring over me now. Quizzed faces wondering what the hell. I agree in silence...what the hell? The cranny I was seeking opened and all came flooding out. I remembered everything. Too much. Too fast. So, I giggled. Again and again. No words. I just let the movie play out in my head, ticket for one. I closed my eyes. I was smiling. The familiar doctor, my doctor gentle, my brother...grabbed my hand once again in a loving squeeze, and I returned the squeeze.
GO TO SLEEP, YOU LITTLE BABY by Shelly Baril
Go back further, the voice says. Go way back. To the beginning. I look up to see who is beckoning me and see only a gray sky of faster than life clouds clipping my head. I duck instinctively, I run towards the only tree here. The roots of the tree are wiggling and snapping at me feet. I cannot stay. Go back. Go back where? I am frustrated by the push of a depressed wind and fall on my hands and knees onto a gravel road. I stand, examine my bloody knees and pull the small rocks from my dented skin. I look up on ahead and see my journey is to travel this dead trail to somewhere I don't ever want to go. I hesitate. The tree branch swings with force against my back to start my steps. Reluctantly, I let my bare feet think for me and walk. On the horizon, the world ends. At least, this is what it looks like to me. I am at the edge of nothingness. And in a giant gust of last breath I am pushed to the past. I am not flying, I am falling...fear riddles my body so severe I am weakened and sick for what I might find. In a second breath, I am in a room...I am hiding in the corner. I am only five, and I am covered in my mother's blood. I hear myself saying “my pretty mommy, my pretty mommy...what has happened to my pretty mommy?” I look over to see this woman-girl...young skin, cut skin. Blood. I recognize this darkened room. It is old, barren of prosperity in furnishings. It is filled with angst. Pain. She is trying to deliver herself to God. For whatever earth has done she has given them red from her wrists and I am just a child, her child crying in the corner. I beg to leave this room, I beg for memory to forget again. Forget you knew her. Forget you once loved this mommy. People are rushing in and taking her. I am unnoticed. Unnoticed would become my middle name.
MONSTERS by Band of Horses There is not much time in time. One minute you are a child with new innocence, ignorant of the world and content to play grown up. Such an easy flowing river is childhood. It only demands of you imagination. If only prophecy inched a place in a child's mind. The ability to look ahead and see what waits for you at each turn of the year. Perhaps then, you would decide not to live at all. For human experience is a knife embedded permanently for the twist. For the bleeding of all past ills which should have disappeared years ago. So what keeps the knife in? unable to heal? unable to forget? I think of these things and wonder why petrified layers of my life are not so petrified. I lay unhappy in time. I hate time. I have lost my time. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. No glorified meaning here, no prosperity in self discovery, and faith is a fairymare I hold onto. Each day is the exact same as before with exception to my face in the mirror. The mirror is the cursed reminder of time, of time almost over. So why does it taunt me so? Why promise love to a fading beauty? Why try to hold youth “in case” of love? The truth of self, of my dreams is not the same as the one I walk to each morning. In my dreams, I am given an endless chance to feel what it is like to be saturated in love by another. An all consuming parallel universe where sometimes I get it right and sometimes I don't...but one thing is certain, it is always there. And because I exist there, means there is no place for me here. I have a damaged soul, an entrusting heart, and not a chance in hell of ever knowing how to feel good again. My past reads sick, my future is here and I am old. And now the fairymares are fainting, replaced with syrup truths and non truths and what ever other crap is either happening or not happening. I have been excused from diving into the only place I am safe and loved, my dreams.
FAKE IT by Seether
“There is so much I have to tell you” Doctor gentle says as he pats my leg and smiles. “are you hungry?” pushing my cold food tray towards me. I am healing physically from the murder, almost murder, but I am not happy about everyone's avoidance about talking about it. Other than cops in and out with questions, Doctor gentle and the ants have skimmed the surface talk with pleasantries almost offensive to my thinking. I am getting more annoyed with these humans by the minutes. My brain cannot process this thick air of unmeaning chatter.
“I want to be alone” I say to any of them listening.
“Well that sounds great but...really leaving you by yourself right now might not be the best option...”Doctor gentle a worrier, “ there are reasons we have to stay close by, don't want you to be a danger to yourself.”
“I said I wanted to be fucking alone, HOW FUCKING HARD IS THAT TO UNDERSTAND AROUND HERE” I am on the fringe. Freakout coming like a freight train up ahead. I am sick of these people, including this Doctor gentle. I know I should be asking the questions about him being my brother and all, but my head fazes in and out in that family arena. I suppose if he says he is, then so be it. Doesn't mean I have to like it or indulge him in superfluous conversations about shit I cannot remember. I am angry. I am hating, again. I hear them leave with their words on top of their heads, like psychological history of being 'bipolar', 'borderline personality disorder', a fractured psyche...blah, blah, blah. And I am boiling back with 'eat my white medicated ass'. I throw a cup. It feels good. I watch as a plate of food hits the wall and slithers three colors of edibles down chalk colored cement. The plastic plate does a three turn twirly dance and makes me smile. I cannot stomach this human experience called mine. Always trapped somewhere by someone. Always. Always. I begin to notice my body. How could I not, now that I am alone with flesh . And I am angry again. I lift the sheets to see me, and think how out of shape I am. How I lay flabbily flattened out on the bed. I then see the knife wounds. Stitches. Iodine. Ugly reminders of me leaking out. In my thoughts, I am glad the seeping of me is coming out, long overdue pains of mine finally surfacing the warrior scars. Fuck everybody. I am still pissed, and I want a fucking cigarette.. Fuck my head. Fuck.
“How far back can she remember?” someone whispered outside the door. There was a small group of doctors or whacker's huddling for a hug of agreement.
“We are not really sure about this part...she seems to recall moments, reacts with confusion or rage. She has a long history of unstable and dysfunctional life patterns. Primary cause of disassociation is childhood trauma..”another voice spoke while rattling p
aper.
“I have the whole file in my office...”it was Doctor gentle, brother bother...he seemed to know all about me. More than I knew myself. A scary destination to have to develop some relationship now with him. I dislike relationships. People annoy me. Generally. Except in fairymares.
“We should probably sit down and figure out some kind of beneficial therapy and med program for her...”
“ Have the police any leads on the unsub?” a female voice I recalled as being Feline Doctor, the angel.
I couldn't make out any other words as they as they shuffled down the hall in the dance hall routine. How many times would I be privy to private conversations about me? I hated them. Again. I looked at the flowers for clarity. For something other than the feeling of hate. Nothing. I looked at the stuff cow and begged for my heart to ache with that physical throb you get when life awakes you. Nothing. Just a doped up head laying on a hospital bed attached to an unrecognizable body. I sigh and think I was so close to escape, in so many ways...and still, here I am, once again in a sterile room of home. I stare out the windows large of world view outside. I am reminded of when hospitals gave me rushes of unconditional love after each birth of my child. The world was perfect. The day was always colors of Norman Rockwell outside. Each baby poured my whole being of what was good about me into the whole room. I swear the colors were rose and gold. I admit to angels and God in the embrace of these new beings. Something I created which was good. I wish I could commit that heavenly singing to each day now...I could be born again. I wondered for a moment about them, my three, where they were now and if they knew I loved them despite my mind tunnels. I wanted to be the good parent. The friend. I wanted them to know the perfect childhood. It didn't turn out that way. I wasn't my mother, but I was worse in more ways than her. I swallow a hard swallow and feel the lump push tears to my eyes. Hold back. This is not the feeling you were looking for, hold back. I swallow again, the lump is still there and I am clenching my teeth tight together, praying to keep in the sorrow. I look at the flowers and they are crying, they are bending heavy telling me to look away. Look away. Don't see me like this.
I close my eyes, purse my lips and start the self-loathing. The hamster wheel begins to roll. Run faster with string thoughts I say. And I begin to think the same sentences over and over and over until a young quiet ant interrupts the falling. She is so young with life. Her long brown hair illuminates her yellow aura. Her smile is not for me but for someone else she is thinking about as she shoots something into my I.V. She promptly leaves as she came. I was thankful for the unnoticing. I was also thankful for whatever magic she had in that needle, because I was going down now, down to blank canvas, away from here to a dream.
GO REST HIGH ON THAT MOUNTAIN by Vince Gill
The butterflies are endless in dance. Thousands of yellow and orange fluttering wings perform ceremonial callings. The green hollows of hills and pastures roll right in rhythm encouraging creatures to poke their heads out of burrowed homes. The harmonious tornado of butterflies now taking over the skies. I walk down the path careful not to involve myself in their mysterious presence. I notice every detail of this walk. The white tiny flowers on an overgrown bush which has no particular smell, but pretty nonetheless. I glance at my feet to see a large green frog take its time to hop across the road. Up ahead is an old house. Faded white from many generations of life once lived there. It is deep in a holler buried in memories of others but not mine. Cautiously, I creep by on this worn road of overgrown grasses. I stare with child curiosity at the large porch filled with antiques and junk precious to someone. There are mismatched chairs seemingly still warmed by the bodies which sat there. An old guitar leans on one for support. Flowers spread erratically in places where once a heart tended to their fate. So engrossed in the haunting of this place I don't notice I am heading uphill with the butterflies to a demanded destination. At the top of the hill I can see all valleys around me. Blankets of different greens, soft hills coming and going, and life calmly projecting it's value to the earth in kisses of care. I am certain this is a picture I am caught in. Until I look to the left and there it is. My truth for this day. An old graveyard of frighteningly old headstones, homemade crosses and the proverbial white picket fence to keep all the dead in. I realize now that I am not alone. My feet are frozen as voices beckon me from the cemetery to enter. I refuse. The butterflies are gone. There are more than a dozen bodies standing in dark clothing circling a cherry wood coffin. Fresh dirt aside waiting for it's turn to re-earth. It is the slowest walk of my life. Who are these people, and how do they relate to me. I am seated in front by hands on my back and nods of mourning. Creepy is my word, and sunk is my feeling. I hide my face deep into my long blond hair. I know nothing of any of this. This world, this graveyard, these people and this day. A tall thin woman is singing “wind beneath my wings” and I am crying. Worse, I am dying inside with inconsolable pain, still hiding myself...willing myself to disappear. I glance at the coffin twice. I melt all of me to the moment. It hurts. The last thing I hear is the first shovel of dirt hitting the coffin. And I remember, it is my father receiving the final goodbye.
Panic. I exhale all my breathe and sit up quickly, knocking some tube out of me. I am trembling. And no one is around to explain anything to me. The dream. The people. Anything. I am sure of one thing. This dream happened. There was no man to take me away into love's eternal fire. There were no
glimpse's of fairymares. This was an event. A remembrance forced upon me through sleep. Lately, my sleep has been violated with straws of reality and I care not to know any of it. My only escape has been infiltrated by the enemy. By my past. There is a leak in my mind wall of protection threatening my madness on a whole new level. I will not go to sleep if this concert is to continue it's intrusion. I lay back on my pillow, unconsciously feeling all the wounds out on my body. I am hungry. I wish I could say I am hungry for answers, but it is not the case. The less I know, the easier it is to stay in my mind's comfort zone. I fear the repent, the judgment, and the acknowledgment of the past. I do not wish the bloody stains of yesterday, nor do I care to create more for tomorrow's chewing. Lest it finds me.
I will run fast whether it be my mind or my feet. My head is arguing with itself. I am third party observer. No mediator needed.
“Hi...” a cautious word let out at the door as Doctor gentle-brother pauses to see an invite to come in. I don't care either way...I am waves of a thousand moods splashing the shores of sharp rocks. He questions himself, rubs the back of his head and I hear the scratching amplified to annoying levels.
“Well...if you are going to come in then do so, just don't stand there like a fucking numb-nuts” I say with bitter tongue, bitter lips, and bitter mind. I am sitting up, propped against a pillow in stoic pinch. I could talk about anything or nothing in this open gesture of a human visitation. I think I have words to spill.
“I can see you are feeling better....you look amazing...got color to your face again” he moves closer with each sentence. I am bothered to think we are related somehow. He was cuter when I didn't know and now he presents himself as a whipped puppy. Weak. I have little tolerance for weakness, an ultimate hypocrite I am. He touches my arm and I look out the window. I am flinching on the inside.