FRAYED

by Lisa

This year has been too hard. I won’t look on the bright side and I refuse to count my blessings and I don’t need those reminders anyway. I do when I can, and right now, it can all go to hell.

Every day, I hope for something different and good. Something simple and sweet that I don’t need to bang into being, because my hammer arm is a scrawny thing these days and I can’t remember simple sweetness anyway. I burned the blueberry compote yesterday, fully aware of strange sweet smoky smells coming from maybe-outside, but really blueberries and sugar and water and lemon juice cooking down to a black lumpy sludge on my stove. I could have checked it, but I didn’t and there are no more blueberries. I should have.

Too many things have burned, been broken, broke down. Too many things have fallen apart in my hands, and my hands can’t seem to remember how to put things together again. I am useless. I am used up while I have too many feelings about what’s at stake and too few words to string together into something that will bring the parts into place. We are always together and I feel quietly shattered. I lost the dog’s leash two days ago. I must have thrown it out with the bag of poop or dropped it into a portal to another dimension. My kid is miserable and I make it worse when I want to help but everything makes it worse.

Every night, I force myself to sleep while too many thinks pile against one another in my pillow-covered head. I wake up with a jolt at 3-5-7-9 and remind myself that we are all here, safe, now, to ease back into the dark break from what is and isn’t. What if it isn’t enough? What if I am not enough? Why doesn’t it get better? I am useless but I am loved, and that could be enough if I knew where to pour my own love and what shape and color useful love might be.

This will pass. It usually does. Spring is happening and the windows are open and I cleaned the whole front room looking for the leash and some peace. This will pass and I will feel every worry with my whole soul until there’s peace or a clean kitchen or at least the makings of something intangible that feels less sharp on my winter-paled heart.

Too many people have left, removed, relocated, become lost. Too many people have lost people. I am afraid of losing the person who is my reason, right now. I am afraid. I am afraid.