A short break to bring you this message... (God is a chemical reaction)

During extreme adversity, the brain floods itself with serotonin to a level that can only be replicated through the administration of psychedelics. In fact, the main mechanism of the hallucinogenic and consciousness-altering effects of psychedelics is this same flurry of serotonin. That means that when someone has a near-death experience and claims they went to heaven and met God, you can tell them they're tripping. They won't believe you, of course, and why would they? Jesus didn't die on the cross so you could go around telling everyone that heaven is an LSD-induced dream. Bad for business, at the very least.

If I had a near-death experience, I think I'd tell everyone that God somewhat resembles Elton John, and he has a message for all of us: it's lonely out in space.

For a person that writes so much about love, I know shit all about it. But what I do know is that love feels a lot like dying without being dead. It's a flashing pain that lights up your whole body and your whole head. The first time those three words come from their mouth it sounds like angel harps and in the times when you look through the tears drooping off your lashes you swear that ram is Isaac because you know you can't fear and love God simultaneously.

It’s a Thursday night. You yank open the door and I’m watching you introduce yourself but I’m not looking at your mouth or the words coming out, instead I’m focussed all at once on your sunburned cheeks and your bright hazel eyes and I’ve already chosen you. Suddenly I am wondering what it’s like to kiss you. Suddenly I want to be drunk.

I had a dream once where I woke up in the middle of a county fair with popcorn stuck to my face and dirt on my shoes. The grounds were freshly abandoned. I played the games until I amassed a large collection of stuffed animals, and then I took a nap on the merry go round. There I finally understood that no one truly believes in anything; we’re all just afraid.

It’s a Saturday morning. We take coffee the same way: black, or a splash of milk, but never any sugar.

For awhile I believed that I had to give answers when they asked me questions. I thought that everything that can be said can also be explained. “I love you” is a physics problem: what goes up must come down. But that’s the thing about the space between knowing and believing in God: when they finally give me the guillotine, and there’s no time to think beyond the chemical reactions, I still choose you.

The seventh day

I don't know what an ending feels like,

and that's because I've never let myself

feel one - I learned in school that

on the seventh day God rested 

and if someone as omnipotent 

as him can catch a break then surely

it should be easier than this
but if you never stop going
maybe you'll forget where you started -

maybe you'll forget
that there was something before
this migraine of a memory at all

and man, I think I just need some time
I wish I could crawl in between
the spaces where calm hides

but maybe those spaces
are a worn out CD on a rainy day,
a t-shirt so old you forget where you got it;

maybe they're you:
your run-on sentences
and how you remind me of Christmas hearths

or they're the plume of a Virginia cigarette
or realizing that every home is new
before it's old

and to be honest, I'm sure that
in the same way that the universe
moves us all towards each other painfully slowly,

I am moving too: the saltwater
in my eyes is not the sting of an ending
but the painful wash of gravity,

the tide that nudges me along
and I'm sure I've seen God resting
in the moments when you brush my lips

and I pray to the church that
gave me these nostalgic butter fingers:
always losing grip on the people I used to be

but I wonder that when you ask
a chicken where its egg came from
if it will reply

even though it knows the answer.

Reconciliation

I remember a time before.

I remember it because I keep going back to it, like a squirrel who stored nuts for the winter; but also like a squirrel who stored nuts for the winter, it takes me a little while to find the place again. She kept me warm on the most unexpectedly cold days. She listened to the water that poured out of me on the rainy days and she listened well because she understood me. We were alike, but as much as two people joined by the word "stepmother" could be. I loved Christmas. I loved wearing the sweaters she gave me every year to wear to Christmas dinner and I remember a time before I had to go cry in the bathroom, wiping my runny nose on the sleeve of the sweater that I didn't really like that much anyway. Before arguments that don't involve me. Before arguments that do involve me. Before grief of something I lost that claims it has found itself.

What mattered in this time was that she cleaned up blood that didn't match hers when I scraped my knee. That she kept extra tampons in the bathroom for me. That the meals she made became my favourite meals. I could always have a hug when I needed it, and hot toddies cured me only when she made them. I remember this time, this time before I had a tendency to gather every bad experience I had with her into one giant garbage mass that casts a shadow over everything. Before I realized that your acceptance of the bad in a person has limits. Before I realized that surprise isn't quite the right word and wondered why I felt it. Before I had to experience another divorce in my life. My world went from the back of a penny to the whole cobblestone street in the ten years I knew her and my pocket still rattles with the change she slipped into it.

In the darkest times, when nothing seemed to join us, the one common denominator was that we both loved my father. Now, someone has turned out the lights and there is no emergency lantern. There is no common denominator. I can't even use that anymore; I cast out a tattered line and it goes slack as it slumps to the floor a few hundred feet away. I will never stop loving my father, and as long as that is true, I will never stop falling downwards into this black hole with the garbage mass looming above me. I remember a time before I understood the elusiveness of reconciliation, that sometimes you just can't go back to a time before the damage. Now, words dance on my lips and letting them loose would make me too sick, but the staccato of their feet is nauseating. That Marie Antoinette of a time, before I hated the taste of cake, before Christmas ornaments made me angry, before I learned how to unlove someone.

There is no reconciliation in unloving someone. There is no before, or after. There is just dark, before you look down and see your own light burning holes through the shadows.

Teach me something

I'm not sure if it's their wet grins or their fingers that curl into the shape of a gun trigger but some people seem to camp rent free so easily in other's hearts. I am no exception to any rules but I have stopped blaming myself for doing what I could, for sometimes being less outspoken than I should have been, and for surviving the way I do. Just because you managed to get your tongue down my throat does not mean that I am easy. I am not easy because I have instead learned to be easy on myself when I'm not strong enough to do the right thing. I have learned that when Ferris tells you life goes by pretty fast, you should listen to him and take a look around.

Tell me about your favourite movie, teach me about what makes you laugh and what makes you cry. As Stephen King said, we all look the same when we're puking the gutter. So tell me you're not afraid to see what's at the bottom, because we all do at some point. Let's be easy on ourselves when one of us overwhelms the other but let's not forget that we both know what goes unsaid, because the difference between being lonely and being alone is the look in someone's eyes.

When someone tells you they love you, believe them. If you're too afraid to believe someone else's heart then you're too afraid to believe your own. If you want the world to be easy on you, be easy on yourself. When a soft breeze runs through your hair, ask it to teach you something because as much as it hurts to be wrong, it hurts more to beat yourself up for something that the world has already punished you once for. Be more like my grandmother, who dresses the alter at her church with beautiful flower arrangements for every mass, and dresses her own home the same, as if her foyer is an alter for coffee gossip and crossword puzzles. Take down the bouquets every season and replace them with new ones but don't forget that you will never learn without being gentle with yourself, that bees prefer to rest on a soft bed of pollen before going off to work. 

Remember me

It is summer and I am looking into the full length mirror in my bedroom admiring my slightly bloated stomach in my underwear. By admiring I mean I love it, and by I love it I mean I do not love it despite, I love it because. I do not think about anyone else and as the corners of my mouth turn up I run my fingers across my skin and feel like a woman with a body that is entirely hers. It is summer and I am on shrooms, topless, running on the boardwalk at night with my t shirt ribboning in the air behind me like a patriotic flag; the patriot is me, and I am also the country; my hair is silk and my body is ten years old again. Later I lie in bed and my stomach begs for gravol but my head sinks into the pillow like a smooth pebble in a stream and at the bottom of the riverbank is the hope that I will not forget that night. It is summer and I am swimming in the lake where the water is perfectly cold and the sky looks like cotton candy. I am right next to the city and I feel defiant: each stroke of my arm carves out serenity while the cityscape waves hello and says, remember me. My friend laughs at me as she bobs up and down from treading water and my body lightens. It is summer and I complain loudly in the back kitchen about rude customers with the other girls at the restaurant and I watch as their bodies sync with their emotions, one hip jutting out, shoulders sinking, hands fluttering in ways that would be unseemly in front of house. One of the girls tells me she loves my ponytail as we eat leftover tres leches from the same bowl. And when the male customer touches my waist I think about how I will later run a fingernail across the receipt of a large tip and wink as the other girls crowd around me, holding the chit in front of them like a fine jewel. It is summer and I do not remember to thank my body but it thanks me. With cherry stained fingers the boy tells me he loves my body. So I tie a knot with a cherry stem, hold it between my teeth, and grin as I tell him that I love it more. 

Patience is not a virtue

If you watch the TV aquarium channel long enough, about three hours or so, a really big fish will swim across the screen. There's no way of knowing exactly when the fish will appear, but you'll eventually see it if you wait long enough. Approximately three hours of waiting for 30 seconds of glory. I can remember times in my life when I was depressed enough that I could have watched the aquarium channel long enough to catch the big fish. In fact, I probably could have repeated that cycle a few more times and, well, there's my whole day crossed off. I wouldn't describe myself as a patient person, but I have never had more patience than when I was depressed. Depressed people are some of the most patient people on the planet. Maybe that's why psychiatry waitlists are so long. The patience required for tasks like watching paint dry or hoping a plant will grow is a warm security blanket. You know you'll be here for awhile. You know that change will be gradual. You pluck peace out of the air and tell it that it's yours for the day. But once you know the exact number of bumps on your popcorn ceiling, you wonder where the definition of "accomplishment" starts and where it ends. The security blanket is a little too scratchy in some places, and you realize that the only reason it's warm is because your body heat makes it so.

Sometimes the problem is knowing what you're waiting for, or maybe even knowing that you're waiting at all. Because if you catch the big fish, that rush of adrenaline might just remind you that good things don't come to those who wait; they come to those who deserve it. And then you can finally turn off the TV.

Hippocratic oath

Medicine estimates that your heart is about the same size as your clenched fist. But I think my heart is bigger than my fist. I've never thrown a punch at someone and my hand is so small I imagine it would barely make a bruise the size of a plum. He compares his hands to mine. I slide the base of my palm up just a bit higher than his and he slides it down to make sure the measurement is accurate but we know it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter how much bigger his hands are because he fits neatly between the pages of a heavy medical textbook and his fist is precisely the size of his heart. I can smell the coated paper as I place my palm flat against his left breast. My younger sister and I used to settle our frequent arguments by wrestling with each other. The only reason we now fight with words instead of limbs is because my sister now has about five inches and twenty pounds on me: I simply wouldn't win. My mother used to always remark, your sister loves you fully no matter how badly you treat her. Back then I never said "I love you" to my sister but I got upset whenever she called me by my name and not her affectionate term, "sissy". Back then I never thought about the size of my heart. My grandmother uses the word "prickly" to describe someone who is not affectionate. I sometimes imagine a cactus and how, if you're pricked by one, the blood won't flow out of the wound until you pull the prickle out of your skin. I look up at the night sky and trace constellations that aren't there, connecting my own dots from star to star, hoping that an image will appear and the hydrogen will drip down into my hair like a paternal pat on the head. If you press your fingers against the soft spot on my neck you'll find my pulse and I'll never tell you the beats per minute but you'll feel the thump-thump of the artery on your fingertips. And when you wake up in the middle of the night from a nightmare that you've had before I won't say a word but I'll enclose your hand in my fist. I think my heart is bigger than my fist but in time and if you're careful, you'll see just how well it bleeds.

Lake Superior

My dad is parking the car in our driveway and he tells me, "I've met this girl and she's a huge Tragically Hip fan". Without missing a beat, I tell him, "that doesn't make her special, you know". And he knows that I am right and he deflates the conversation with his silence. But I remember how my dad is always the one who says "I love you" first, how he told his second ex-wife on their second date that he was going to marry her. She thought he was crazy but she didn't know that he was just forming a constellation that she would one day long to camp under. My dad is always the one who says "I love you" first. I heard it when he kissed my mother's pregnant belly and I remembered it when I was born like a song heard in the womb. My dad is throwing a baseball at me and in the satisfying sound of the baseball falling in the center of my glove I hear it again. I throw the baseball back and it narrowly misses his head, thwacking against the wooden fence in the driveway, but he laughs and picks it up with a gloved hand. My dad says to me, "one day you will love someone the way they talk about it in songs and it will feel awesome". I have never been the one who says "I love you" first but I have whispered it within myself, written it down in every white space on the page before anyone said "I love you" to me and the day I saw my dad cry for the first time was the day I regretted waiting for someone to say it first. My dad's love is Lake Superior and no one knows where the bottom is. I came from that water and I've learned that anyone who swims in it and drowns spent too much time kicking and not enough floating. Not that I don't kick, because if anyone is a product of their parents I have spent just as much time mirroring his short temper as I have loving him. So when I tell my dad that not every woman is special, I do not mean that they are unworthy, I mean that they do not really know how deep the water is and they do not know how not to care that they will never reach the bottom. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west and if you catch the stars in between you can trace my dad's arteries, as goofy and unstrung as they are, and hold them in your hand like a worn out baseball. One day there will be a woman who will hear the "I love you" like a song and she will hum it until the lake water softens her skin.

My dad is always the one who says "I love you" first and he always means it.

Hummingbird

A hummingbird's heart beats 1263 times per minute
its wings flutter 80 times per second
if a panic attack is a distinctly human feeling
then a hummingbird is nature's equivalent.

I used to fill the feeder
in my grandmother's backyard
kneeling at the window,
chin resting softly
on the windowsill
waiting for the hummingbirds
to prod the feeder
searching for sugar water.

In this quiet observation
I could hear my breath,
inhale, exhale. Inhale, exhale.
I know that breathing
can be switched
to a voluntary action:
all you have to do is think about it
I know how still
water looks in a glass at 3am
and how cold air
brings you back into your body
like somehow you've forgotten it
somehow you're standing
in the waiting room of a UFO
somehow solipsism sounds a little too convincing.

One time I caught sight of a hummingbird
it landed on the feeder
its wings stopped beating and for once
I noticed the quiet beauty
the still dark eyes
of bundled anxiety
so quiet
you could see its tiny chest move
with every breath.

My inhales and exhales are like sails
steering the lost ship
knuckles white steadying myself
in the wake of the storm
the waves crash against
the insides of my skull
and I am sea sick.

The method of quietness
is something you have to learn:
what feels so much out of your control
is precisely the opposite
and when you feel
homesick in your own bed
you have to learn how to find a home
in your body.

I always liked how the feeder looked
like flowers
like a little flower home
like you could curl up in the plastic
let the sun warm your skin
wash your face with sugar water
and forget what time it is.

I haven't seen a hummingbird in years
but one cold night I swore
I could hear the rapid fluttering
of a hummingbird's wings
they were so tiny
yet so loud
and something inside me
went completely still.