I have been denied mercy.
While choking on snot and
gasping through sobs.
My mistake was having faith that
I was begging to someone who
was capable of providing mercy.
I’m so sorry
You have breast cancer
But your breasts are still
Producing milk
So, I will send you to
The pharmacy
Instead of a mastectomy
That way, you can still pump
And produce
“But won’t my milk be tainted?”
It won’t change the taste
In the mouths of babes
And their stomachs will
feel full
There was a time when my fields had dried and my chains all rusted. Dirt would creep up my body, like moss.
I filled my tub up with poison oak and bleach. Let myself soak a while. Just until the water turned pink.
I was a drought in the middle of grow season. Even the thin whispy clouds avoided the cast of my throe.
Feathers would come back on the skin of the bird, and I held her down, gripped the pliers in my calloused hand, and plucked them each back out, slowly.
I knew the crops were not dead, yet. I could feel them struggling to find light, beneath my thick blanket of calamity, sewn together with vengeance.
A dry day in May, one single yellowish- green stem poked itself up high enough to see the sun. I glared at it with confusion.
Almost faster than their legs could keep up, my two little chicks ran to the stem to investigate. I watched.
“There’s nothing to keep it alive here, ya hear?!”
I followed with heavy feet as the chicks fled downhill into the distance. What young, naive little chicks.
When I see them coming back towards me, I am blinded by the reflection of the sun.
It is not until they pass by me to lead the way home, that I see how ignorant I have been.
The water cascades from the spout of the watering can, showering the stem with the nourishment I couldn’t provide.
I first really laid eyes on him in the E-wing hallway of our high school. I was standing at my locker, and about seven lockers down to the right this tall, green eyed, clean cut boy was standing at my bully’s locker. He was dating her. So as dreamy as my 14 year old hormones thought he was, my brain wasn’t about to forget that he liked HER.
To make matters worse, I had given him, HER phone number. My history with Eliza is a sad ballad for a different time, but for the sake of this story: we had been ‘frienimmies’ for quite some time and she had asked me to call this Lee kid and give him her number, so I did. That was in June, and here we were in August and I was wishing I had known he was so damn cute before I subjected him to the soap opera that was Eliza.
Time passed and as most high school relationships do, they ended. Now, my friend Alma and I had confided in each other that we both thought he was cute. We were very close friends, so we made an agreement that neither one of us would date him.
… until two weeks later when Alma calls me up and tells me she kissed Lee at the tug fest. I was mad, but have never been a grudge holder.
Unfortunately for Alma, Lee and I saw a lot more of each other because of their relationship… and the more Lee and I saw of each other… the more we liked seeing each other. We gave each other the butterflies. You know? That tingly feeling that makes your guts all warm and you have the urge to squeal in excitement? Yeah. I believe Alma and Lee started dating in late July, and I started dating him in October. (Fun fact: Alma and I are still friends and Lee and I went to her wedding!)
One of the things Lee did to impress me was pour hand sanitizer on his hand and down his arm, and light it on fire. At my locker. Before first period.
“That’s gonna burn your arm hair.” I snarked.
“Just watch!” Lee insisted.
We both stood there and watched the green flame run up his arm. Then, we both wrinkled up our noses to the smell of burnt hair.
“Stupid!” I laughed out loud and pushed his shoulder.
“You liked it!” He laughed back and grabbed my arm.
Our eyes locked and I could feel the warmth of his soul. He felt like my very oldest and dearest friend.
There’s a lacuna, of sorts
inside of your mind
and it could take years of
journey to find…
and there is no map
there is no road
you must go alone to
mind space unhallowed…
a clearing of crispness,
where the clock hands don’t move…
you’re cut free from anchors
and thoughts glide out, smooth.
The weight that you feel
is that of your soul
and it’s place in a web,
…where do you pull?
Life all webbed out as
one breathing existence…
you can see spindles burst
and ripple far out into the distance.
SILENCE! Now, pay attention…
where is it tight?
Always striving to be a masterpiece,
yet society is seldom right.
You gain new awareness,
a careful point of view…
a journey of mindful thinking,
open to seeing things brand new.
You wonder why this web is so broken,
it can only inflict it’s own pain…
WHY do these spindles keep bursting?!
Can’t they see the web’s one in the same?!
You sit in this new sorrowed awareness,
seeing that you cannot change this alone.
Confusion sits next to the sadness,
this self mutilation is overgrown.
This journey is seldom taken–
tainted eyes see obligation.
But open hearts can clearly see,
humanity needs dedication.
The celestials keep telling her
to be like the rest
to be at rest
to finally let her core cool
and her air clear
she turns away
having faith that tomorrow
her two legged foreigners
will learn they were
not ever meant to be
foreigners here
He wiped the bit of gunpowder from his white freckled cheek
“Because I know that I love you, I just don’t know what that means.”
His voice was light and thoughtful.
This was a glimpse of Lee. The first glimpse of him I had seen in weeks.
There was something different in his vibe that morning, and so I decided to ask him
“why do you want to go to marriage counseling, if you know you want to leave me?”
I had been married to Lee for nine years, but I hadn’t really seen him in a few months. He traveled for work, but that’s not what I mean. It’s like someone else had taken over his body, and Lee was being held hostage inside. For months his eyes had been different, someone washed out their glitter. He didn’t look at me, he looked through me. He stopped remembering basic things about me, told me I did things that I didn’t, and seemed to lose grip with reality. He was in love with someone else, that he just met, and they were planning a life together in a different country.
I had known for most of our marriage that Lee had some sort of mental health issue, but for a long time it was pretty easy to chalk it up to damage from deployment in the Marine Corps. As we moved through the stages of life, so did his darkness. I would tell him to seek treatment, and he would, and then he would quit, and so on. Nothing too far out of what is unfortunately normal.
We had finally landed on a patch of normalcy. We had two kids. We bought a house. We were making it, I thought.
I wish I would have looked harder.
I wish I would have looked much deeper into his eyes.
I wish I could have caught him.
but you can only catch someone if you see them falling.
The day that Lee hit the ground, he had already been falling for over a year. I can still close my eyes and remember the feeling
the gravitational pull on your soul when being scooped out of one reality
and the burn of being seared into another.
it just kept coming
crimson
panic
penny aroma
they handed me an armful of
white
clean
folded cotton
Gravity snickered under my body weight
wet
heavy
soggy hopelessness
the sound of suffering pierced the air
sharp
clear
gut wrenching
finally the soul broke free of the shell
stillness
understanding
moving on
my elbows drip with aftermath
viscus
bold
still warm
we couldn’t keep you here
human
boy
Ashur Robinson
(Written December 2009)
Alright baby they’re going to bring you outside
Please cry so hard that there is no mistaking
you are here to stay
Alright baby momma will try
just give me time, I am being born too
but I will bring us through this
Alright baby don’t be afraid
the odds are against us, but that’s okay
the odds don’t know our power
Alright baby we ride at dawn
the earth isn’t perfect but I will teach you
always remember you’re safe in my arms
(Written late March 2018)
darkness isn’t something you see
with your eyes
the heartbeat changes
running on necessity and no will
the skin starts to become so very
heavy
the bones bleed
black agony
someday I will come back
to life
or I will die here
failure
to adapt to
a new
reality
Words for humans 