Cold water lashed tense hands - for many years she washed them again and again. Cold water and bleach: its enzymes and molecules ready to attack, hydrogen peroxyde tires skin and eyes hurt.
Chronic pain, dissatisfaction, tense face. Mitochondrial fatigue, exhaustion that constricts her ribs, her world is in a nutcracker, her burning head bursts ---
Until she sat on a stool for many long nights, when there was white fog outside the grey place and a floor inside of pale dead skin, waiting...
waiting for the hurt to peel off.
Then one day I saw her reappear, undressed in white.
Beautiful layers woven into this piece summated by the fragments that metaphorically distilled into the imagination. It has been a while, has it not?
Amor
There is only one reason I know of for bleaching skin, and I don't think there are any benefits. Obsessive compulsive disorders consume entirely too many lives. This looks like start of a mysterious story that many people would enjoy and identify with. I probably would not.
I appreciate Kate's response to this write, as it gives valuable insight to the poem, which I cannot understand as I've never had to live with such a nightmare of uncontrollable pain, and all-too-controlled manipulation of it.
The poem in and of itself is stark--clinically so. All that white space in there is filled with our imaginations, and that, coupled with the glow from the chosen photo, penetrate deeply into our psyche. So although we may never have experienced her world, this emotional magnet finds in us the metallic painful memories we'd thought we'd laid to rest.
This "Beyond" series is intriguing. It's making us all think--dig deeper than what we assume is obvious to the eye-- that behind every deviant behavior, there is a story-- an underlying reason-- a some-time frail human being very similar to us.
Anyone who has lived with unrelenting pain or endemic chronic fatigue will immediately exclaim "YEEEEEEEESSSS!" to this, Axilea. It is a summation of that wafer-thin precipice existance that those wracked in this way, day-after-day, can experience and the high dependency on control that can develop as a result. I have personal experience of this, both of myself and my daughter who has had ME since she was 13 (she's now 24) yet has had miraculous healing through understanding the mind's role in assisting a recovery. It can be a ghostly existance and I am awed by your ability to speak of it with such apposite and concrete metaphor. Brilliant work. xx
"...her world is in a nutcracker," is at the core and at mine; how it clamps and suffocates and makes me want to struggle and resist even if I can't. For me, Axilea, this is highly personal...but caterpillar to butterfly offers rescue and relief, if not hope.
Axilea,
This is remarkable poetry, I love how you always have such metaphoric depth. The obsessive compulsive is a complex condition.. You describe it very well.
Much peace, love, and light,
Amber "V"
Axilea this is one of your absolute bests. It is stark but in its starkness there is beuty and a strength that grips the mind. In this I saw my own mother who raised nine children...often washing all our clothhes by hand with scrub board and hard soap and then in later years to be able to enjoy the life she deserved only to die a short time later. I do not know who this is about but when it can stir those kind of memories and feelings in another...it is writing at its best, thanks for sharing.
Fee
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High school student Kevin Borden has a secret and his name is Louis Lannegan. He also has an overbearing mother. A tale of coming out in the shadow of parents and friends. Award winning novella.
May I offer you a Round the World Cruise of a lifetime for the price of a novel?
Not only do the seas roll on but two romances,a death at sea, uncovered past lives, history uncovered in Brazil, caves in Australia, poetry in Senegal, the Lux Mundi
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Amor
Regis
Ron
The poem in and of itself is stark--clinically so. All that white space in there is filled with our imaginations, and that, coupled with the glow from the chosen photo, penetrate deeply into our psyche. So although we may never have experienced her world, this emotional magnet finds in us the metallic painful memories we'd thought we'd laid to rest.
This "Beyond" series is intriguing. It's making us all think--dig deeper than what we assume is obvious to the eye-- that behind every deviant behavior, there is a story-- an underlying reason-- a some-time frail human being very similar to us.
--Charlie
John
Blessings,
Christine
Then one day I saw her reappear, undressed in white.
- David
This is remarkable poetry, I love how you always have such metaphoric depth. The obsessive compulsive is a complex condition.. You describe it very well.
Much peace, love, and light,
Amber "V"
Fee
Georg