Mundane Happenings or Intimate Snapshots 5

Any number of things from any number of yesterdays. Less like mundane happenings and more like intimate snapshots. Life has been busy but I am again finding my way back. As many times as it takes

Any number of things from any number of yesterdays. Less like mundane happenings and more like intimate snapshots. Life has been busy but I am again finding my way back. As many times as it takes. 

1. The sun called me out today and I answered. Walked to the coffee shop, gawked at an almost cloudless blue sky. Stopped to sniff a rosemary bush. Smiled. At trees. In the coffee shop. Smiled at everything.

2. Some days are hard. I wake up early to spend my morning reading my emotional support book in the doctor's office. I wait. I fill out forms and answer questions. I stare away from the nurse while she draws blood for labs.I treat myself to a croissant egg sandwich for being a big girl. I have to take deep breaths during meetings, even though I don't even have that many meetings. My therapist cancels my appointment last minute because she too has a life that is happening. I text my friends the fears that I do not trust my blood relatives to hold with tenderness and calm. 

I want to type some variation of lol at the end of every sentence: 

1. “My labs came back. Apparently my white blood cell count is low… could be an autoimmune disorder. Maybe nothing. Hopefully nothing. LOL maybe that explains the fatigue.” 

2. “Maybe it's a bad time to make a joke but I’m ready to go at any moment if it means not having to keep working LMAO.” 

3. “One of the two people who are supposed to be on Saturday’s panel  has fully ghosted. Guess I get to try and find their replacement in less than 4 business days HAHAHA.” 

4. “Guess who else is having a health scare? My mother. LOL.” 

DELETE DELETE DELETE.

5. In the car I practice saying “This is scary. I am afraid. It is not funny” aloud to myself.

3. Grief hangs on the periphery of my consciousness. Finds me alone, reading Audre Lorde and pretending I am not afraid. Attaches itself, like an invisible weight upon my back. Flashes my grandmother, father, uncle, Renee’s face in my memory. Finds me alone staring away from the needle that draws my blood for labs. Sets the resting griefs in me to stir. Not quite awake, their movements are far and close all at once and yet. I feel further from myself. 

4. I smoke weed to sleep. Throw in a cbd gummy because why not. I have anxious dreams of work events gone not quite right and 8hrs later I am still in the heavy places. Work distractions welcome me. 

5. Last night I performed at an open mic. Afterward a man told me he wished I’d read my poem more slowly. Said he wanted to lay down and rest in the beauty of my words. 

6. 7pm light- ness of being. After months, that felt like years of 5pm darkness and 8pm midnights. Oh to be outside. Resting in a sun spot. Wrapped around a tree. Contemplating nakedness. Listening to the quiet of cherry blossoms rustling in the breeze. Happiness finds me in moments.

7. The strangeness of pink chemical reaction. Instantaneous travel from tipsy exhaustion to the land of wide awake. Internal dialogues with my 17 year old self. Flashbacks to a religious before. A residency application deadline and the kind of friend who listens for the missing places as I read aloud as many times as it takes. She is not annoyed with me, instead it is 11:29pm and we are laughing. I am a keyboard ninja racing against the clock but there is no fear of loss. I press submit and drive home with my gratitude. 

8. Talking my social anxiety down at the door to a gathering I am late to. Reminders that these friends would not be angry with me. Charcuterie roasted veggie board. Traumatized bitches practice safety together while wearing cozy pants. 

9. To discover that the person you thought didn’t like you actually just thought you didn't like them. The start of a friendship.

10. A memory. Sitting on a rooftop in Cuba watching a storm roll in. A shift in the temperature of the wind slowly and then all at once rain. Warm rain dotting my face and arms. Eyes fixed to the sky in the distance. An audible sigh. 

11. A  world of options opens before me and for a moment I allow myself the excitement of possibility. Palm trees? Maybe. 

12. Today I wore a hat my mother made. Its yarn transitions from yellow to green, to white and back again. It is double layered and warm like the very first day. After I have gotten off the plane. After we have made it to the house. Before the strangeness of hospital visits and childhood memories. Before missing the home I have created for myself.

13. Warm like a necessary reminder of who I used to be. Before the anxiety that is now my daily companion. A golden yellow dress with a massive bow. Possibly ugly but worn with confidence and delight. Laughter and play with a team I have come to love. All the places that sometimes feel like fear, also felt as excitement. Change as the only constant. 

14. Flight number three. A middle seat. Hours spent collabing on a grant about freedom dreams and belonging paradoxically visionary and happening now. Hope as a verb. The contrast in the person I am at work constantly laying claim to hope and the me that knows writing as the only safe place for all of my anger and sad. If I let my anger and sad take up more space in my relationships would I finally be able to stop writing about it? Does being angry and sad in moments make me too difficult to love? Can there be a tender home for a black woman's anger and sad? If I asked my past selves they’d say no. No there are no tender homes for a black woman’s anger and sad. 

15. This time DC. Facing off with my smallest selves. Hugging my niece. Debating the merits of ghosting. Recognizing myself as miles away from the person I once had to be to survive. Hysterical mostly fake but maybe real screaming into a void. Making myself see love where it is not always obviously visible. “There's food in the house. You can take the car. I got you this souvenir from greece. Dinner is ready.”  An audible on boundaries listened to with enthusiasm and determination. The reminder that at any given moment folks are doing their very best. 

16. Writing even if no one is reading because I am happier and more alive when I do.