UNDONE
By Sue Goyette
In this weather, wood has warped and doors
won't shut the way they should. The mist holds daylight
close, hoarding. When it escapes, the light doesn't
spill, doesn't slide cross the floor, but creeps
and hobbles using furniture to hold itself up. It just wants
to sit. In this weather, light has age, grows rings like a stump
and can no longer hear. It's the ancient relative in the corner
with a change purse and a group of grandchildren at its feet.
Extension wires, 100 watt bulbs, nothing helps. It's faint
and weak and drinks only water. In this weather, not even
the high tide of starlings rolling onto the lawn gets its attention.
"Leave me alone," it says, having forgotten the way it ranted
and raved. How it demanded more time and more flowers.
The garden couldn't keep up, it touched everything:
the silver sugar bowl, the glass fish, every mirror, every drop of water.
And so begins the season of forgiveness, when the birch trees
bordering the yard turn back to bark and branch and you're alone
and I'm alone, the pantry is stocked
and winter is coming up the driveway.
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I'm undone and don't know how to put me back together. This painful (physical, emotional, spiritual) ageing is the hardest thing I've ever done. My body betrays me every single minute of every hour of every day. Then it betrays me some more. What is a woman without the essence of what makes her female? Why do we run out of hormones and become dried up shells of our selves when we're still so young? We're dying, of course...but...but...Winter comes too soon, too soon...
xo,
Marion
"The great secret that all people share is that you really haven't changed in seventy or eighty years. Your body changes, but you don't change at all. And that, of course, causes great confusion." ~Doris Lessing
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When I can look Life in the eyes,
grown calm and very coldly wise,
Life will have given me the Truth,
and taken in exchange — my youth. ~Sara Teasdale
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8 comments:
I love that index page! Beautiful!
(((hugs))) Marion. Life can be a bitch. We adjust in time, though. Yes! We do!
i understand this, marion. this is what i meant when i wrote, "my face is different from three years ago/puffy/near the subcutaneous layer of my dreams/i begin to lose a little collagen". it's so strange, isn't it?
i've noticed lately that my mouth is going lax. could it be that before i was always aware of flexing the muscles? and now i discover myself making the weirdest faces - that of an old lady, really. huh...
i want to love this journey. the whole of it. it takes effort. especially when pain stands up and takes the floor. this i understand well, dear friend)))
let's be awake and aware until the last minute, marion.
xo
erin
I am right there with you, Marion. I keep trying to ignore it, pretend that it isn't there, outrun it...no avail.
Sometimes, I don't recognize myself. It is the oddest feeling.
Thanks, Kelly. I may never adjust, I don't know. I feel like I'm disappearing. xo
OH Marion!!! Who needs hormones?? I had mine ripped out in 2009...it was the lack of mobility that aged me....hormones can be replaced with faerie dust and imagination!!!
As the light creeps and hobbles into your life...jump out from behind the sofa and shout BOO! (giggles grow hormones too) XXX
The index page is amazing! Did you find it somewhere or design it?
I've got some signs of aging but nothing like what you are experiencing...the "undone" paragraph choked me up. Wish I had a magic wand ML...
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