The nutritionist said I should eat root vegetables
Said if I could get down 13 turnips a day
I would be grounded,
rooted.
Said my head would not keep flying away
to where the darkness is.
The psychic told me
my heart carries too much weight
Said for 20 dollars she’d tell me what to do
I handed her the twenty,
she said “stop worrying darling, you will find a good man soon.”
The first psychotherapist said I should spend 3 hours a day
sitting in a dark closet with my eyes closed, with my ears plugged
I tried once but couldn’t stop thinking about
how gay it was to be sitting in the closet
The yogi told me
to stretch everything but the truth,
said focus on the outbreaths,
everyone finds happiness
when they can care more about what they can give than what they get
The pharmacist said klonopin, lamictil, lithium, Xanax
The doctor said an antipsychotic might help me forget what the trauma said
The trauma said don't write this poem
Nobody wants to hear you cry about the grief inside your bones
My bones said
"Tyler Clementi dove into the Hudson River
convinced he was entirely alone."
My bones said
"write the poem."
The lamplight.
Considering the river bed.
To the chandelier of your fate
hanging by a thread.
To every day you could not get out of bed.
To the bullseye of your wrist
To anyone who has ever wanted to die.
I have been told, sometimes,
the most healing thing we can do- Is remind ourself over and over and over
Other people feel this too
The tomorrow that has come and gone And it has not gotten better
When you are half finished writing that letter to your mother that says “I swear to God I tried”
But when I thought I hit bottom, it started hitting back
There is no bruise like the bruise of loneliness kicks into your spine
So let me tell you
I know there are days when it looks like the whole world
is dancing in the streets when you break down
like the doors of the looted buildings
You are not alone
and wondering who will be convicted of the crime
of insisting you keep loading your grief
into the chamber of your shame You are not weak
just because your heart feels so heavy
I have never met a heavy heart
that wasn't a phone booth with a red cape inside
Some people will never understand
the kind of superpower it takes for some people to just walk outside
Some Days I know my smile
looks like a gutter of a falling house
But my hands are always holding tight to the ripchord of believing
A life can be rich like the soil
Can make food of decay
Can turn wound into highway
Pick me up in a truck with that bumper sticker that says
“it is no measure of good health to be well adjusted to a sick society”
I have never trusted anyone with the pulled back bow of my spine
the way I trusted ones who come undone at the throat
Screaming for their pulses to find the fight to pound
Four nights before Tyler Clementi jumped from the George Washington bridge
I was sitting in a hotel room in my own town
Calculating exactly what I had to swallow
to keep a bottle of sleeping pills down
What I know about living is the pain is never just ours
Every time I hurt I know the wound is an echo
So I keep a listening to the moment the grief becomes a window
When I can see what I couldn’t see before,
through the glass of my most battered dream,
I watched a dandelion lose its mind in the wind
and when it did, it scattered a thousand seeds.
So the next time I tell you how easily I come out of my skin,
don’t try to put me back in
just say here we are together at the window
aching for it to all get better
but knowing as bad as it hurts our hearts may have only just skinned their knees
knowing there is a chance the worst day might still be coming
let me say right now for the record, I’m still gonna be here
asking this world to dance, even if it keeps stepping on my holy feet
you- you stay here with me, okay?
You stay here with me.
Raising your bite against the bitter dark Your bright longing
Your brilliant fists of loss Friend
if the only thing we have to gain in staying is each other,
my god that’s plenty
my god that’s enough
my god that is so so much for the light to give
each of us at each other’s backs whispering
over and over and over
“Live”
Thank you *Applause*