Wakes

I wake thinking about corners.  I open my eyes to a word flying away. My celestial body jumps after it, gropes the atmosphere. As the morning glow creeps into my eyes, it disappears. All I retain is “corners.” But it has a mate, somewhere.

It was something to do with my ears and thinking. Thinking, my ears, a word to describe something that fills and fills and doesn't ever drain. Something like water. Or wax. Water or wax in my ears for months. Plugged up. Distorting sound and balance.  

~

The other day, a nurse spent forty-five minutes shooting warm water and peroxide into my ears to flush out the wax buildup. At the end she said, “We made some progress.” I looked at the cup containing the drainage: microscopic glitter dust floating in blue plastic.

I wake and begin by trying suction. Palm to the side of the head. After all of these weeks perhaps better words would pour out, words that would be good enough, or better than good enough. Perhaps they would relieve me of the pressure, stop marinating my brain and finally allow themselves to be born onto the page. After palms I try swallowing. I stick my fingers inside the sides of my head. I tickle my eardrums. I yawn. I invert myself–edge of the bathtub. I fold the top half of my body to meet the bottom half of my body. I feel the words rush to the edges, filling my nose, my forehead. I am swollen with them. I blow words out of my nose into a wall of toilet paper. I yawn strategically. I cup my palm again, dribble my head between my hands until I hear the pop and crackle of a released word: one, two, three words. Words begin coming out of my ears, but not THE word. Not the one I’m chasing, the one that led me to corners. I was spewing words all over my tissue, but it was just debris, debris, debris.

~

I wake on my hands and knees picking tiny pieces of paper off of my living room floor. Strips of words and blank spaces and patterns strewn around the room rubbing shoulders with potato chip crumbs, bitten fingernails, leaf sheddings, dead skin. Last night, the task was insurmountable. A problem for Future Me. Future Me who became Now Me, on my hands and knees picking up microscopic pieces of paper off the debris-flooded floor. Last night it felt like a privilege to spend hours on my hands and knees on the living room floor cutting and pasting tiny pieces of paper onto other pieces of paper, calling it art. I had thought, how nice it is to get to do this, but Now Me wakes and cleans up my messes, and wonders how nice it really is to be crawling on my hands and knees at five a.m., pinching tiny pieces of paper between my fingers—avoiding the crumbs—before going to work.

~

I wake late and it is February. I think everyone knows but me. Knows what their “thing” is, their niche, their genre, topic, passionate-all-consuming-envelopment-of-voice that guides them through their life. Have I not been thoughtful? Have I not been “trying something new?” Have I been trying something new too much? I wake and think about how much longer everyone else has been awake. I slept in and am behind. They all saw February coming. 

~

I wake with another body next to me. Entangled. Entangled in limbs and words. Last night we reviewed our astrology charts. The other body reported feeling sad for our younger selves after realizing her father’s outbursts were the reason she doesn’t talk much. I wanted to sleep, but the other body was having an emotional breakthrough. And now it is the next day and we are sending photographs of our younger selves to each other. We text “CUTE <3” with heart-eyes emojis and I think about those kids now sending pictures of themselves on iPhones. How old the story is of angry fathers, or silent fathers, or gone fathers, and yet how much we think it does not apply, not to me, until suddenly it does? It comes haphazardly wrapped in astrology charts and the mental frailty of 1:30 a.m. in the new bed of a lover. It comes wrapped in attempts at relation. It comes in the thin shape of a circle. Inside, acute triangles, their points huddled in a rounded corner.

~

I wake and I sit up and again I grasp for words and I do not catch them. I look at myself in the mirror, cross-legged, sitting upright on the bed, questioning my decision to wake up this early, to go to this morning yoga class, to begin my day this way: productively. I consider backing myself onto the covers, under, inside, sunk. I consider but tragedy awaits me there, more elusive words I won’t be able to catch. The unrequited love story. I can feel wakefulness creeping into me, though, up from my sock-covered toes. The day has already begun. A short sigh, hands through my hair, I place my feet on the burlap rug.

~

I wake in the shape of a soft edge

I wake and taste radishes in my mouth

I wake in sweaty underwear

I wake to a teddy bear’s open eyeball

I wake and roll over

I wake with words plugging my ears

I wake with tea tree oil in my nose

I wake and there is water on my bedside table

I wake and there is no one there

I wake and the mirror has shifted