Meagan Noel Hart's Blog

 

You will feel hurt. Frustrated. Ignored.

You will feel humbled. Saddened. Enraged.
You will feel lost. Loss. Grief.
Pity and confusion.
Snarky and defeated.
Sour.
Numb.
But there will also be sweet kisses of hope in the dark.
Joy.
You will feel seen, supported, empowered.
Unalone.
You'll even laugh. Feel inspired.
You will feel determined. Defiant. Certain.
Cry tears that taste bitter inside your smile.Guilt.
What's important is that you feel and feel.
Feel all of it.
So you remember why it hurts in the first place.
Why you can't stand still.
Pain is a signal. A warning to keep going.
Happiness is a necessary fuel on a dark journey.
And the most effective thing you can do in the face of darkness is keep glowing.
Whether you feel the spark, or ignite it in someone else.
So feel it.
Feel it all.
Today is just a battle.
A battle in a war you can only lose if we all
fail to feel

Your legs lay on the table. One dark as soil. The other light as sand. They’re both complete sets, feet still attached. A rarity, even if there are only eight toes. Two little piggies will need to be deleted from that nursery rhyme.

I lift your torso from the special delivery box. It’s biologically male, but that’s merely an aesthetic. It’s second hand, like all your parts, but well cared for.

I hoist it to my hip. It’s weighty, already preloaded with the needed organs, but not a burden.

A person’s first torso should be small enough to carry, but not strong enough to support more than crawling. Newborns get into trouble if their bodies are capable of more than they understand. Our forePARENTS learned that the hard way. There’s no skipping the dependent stages of childhood. Yet, sizing up is hard on young bodies, so these parts will need to last two years.

I squeeze your torso closer. Once my labor is over, you’ll embrace me back, and I tingle with anticipation.

Next, the arms. The seller lived fifty minutes from the city, but the price was worth the drive. They’re thin, and bruised, and the hands fell off ages ago, but that’s normal. I got lucky with your feet, you see.

I found free hands anyway. Listed online. I bend each finger, testing the joints, all ten delicate fingers, perfect. The seller had handed them to me as though they’d break apart if let go too soon. I spied a box of toys at the end of the hall, but the house was silent. They dropped your hands into mine as if it hurt.

Their child wasn’t sizing up.

Is it bad luck to use pieces from a child that fell apart? I kiss the tiny knuckles. I won’t humor the thought further.

By my will alone, you will not come undone.

In a few short years, you’ll have my old hands anyway. The ones I used to feed myself, to cling to my parents, to learn to draw, to create. I know it’s selfish, keeping such a useful body part so long for sentiment alone, but it wasn’t just for me. It was for you. So that you may have something of me. The only thing I ever had of my parents is the heart that beats in me now. When I’m done with this world, you’ll have that as well.

What is eternity anyway, but an endless hospital stay?

I found you the most beautiful eyes. One still looks cloudy, typical. But the other? Green as springtime.

You’ll only have one ear, but no one will notice with those eyes, and the hearing is still functional.

Overall it’s a good head, a well put together face, the sloppy stitching around the nose aside.

Now, to put it all together.

Every stitch is careful, connecting the veins. The parts that will learn to speak to each other, but not to grow. Not to change.

My heart aches more now that you’re nearly here, and I am reminded of the pain and loneliness our ancestors must have endured when they learned they could no longer grow children naturally. The millions who died thinking the world would be barren of a child’s laugh.

My labor is long and lonely. I’ve no partner as recommended. We’ve learned there was a reason for the biological insistence of two. For living in families and communities. It makes things easier. Still, even with a single parent, you’ll have no shortage of love.

The blood tank is warm, nearly ready. To think, the DNA within used to matter. The whole idea is absurd. Like growing an entire child in a womb. Eggs. Sperm. Fairy Tales that once were true.

I open the chest to check the heart, never trusting a packaged deal. It’s strong.

Soon it will beat.

First, your brain. This I splurged on. Not for freshness, or perceived intelligence. Such claims are scams. You need a dead enough brain. One that hasn’t deteriorated, but was left alone just enough to erase its previous life.

This is the one thing you will have your entire life. It will contain you. Make you so.

And there will be no fragmented memories for you as there are for me.

A faulty brain is no good. A faulty brain can make memory feel like realtime. Can bring me back to sitting on my parents’ operating table, I can even feel the metal cold against my thighs. I tell my Parent I don’t need the epidural. “The nerves are dead in that leg, member?”
They won’t oblige. The new nerves work, and reattachment hurts.

I force myself back to you.

Your brain fits snug. The more advanced, not yet necessary portions, are stored elsewhere. I’ll add them once you have a bigger skull. A bigger one now would strain your neck.

I suture your scalp. Pump in your fluids.

It is time.

The machines whir to life, electricity sparking.

I’ve always criticized this next bit as ritual superstition, but now that you’re put together before me, I’m unwilling to risk skipping it. So, I call, “Soul! Hear me. If you are recycled, may you be worthy, and welcome the security of being tethered again. If you are new, please find safe harbor here. I will guide you.”

I apply the shock to your body once, twice, three times.

And wait.

Your lids open. The green eye first, then the second.

A moment of terror rushes me before you gasp, ragged and wet.

The first breath of air hurts, and you wail. I scoop you into my arms, and hold you, soothe you, love you. Love you more than I imagined I could love anything in this entire world.

You quiet, reach your small hand to my face. You’re heavier put together. I can feel your newness. The weight of your trust. Your innocence. Your potential. Your love.

I know that this —

This is why we live on.

2018 was the 200th anniversary of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstien; or, The Modern Prometheus, and the world celebrated with Frankenreads events. In honor of this, I had assigned my students to write a story inspired my Shelley’s masterpiece, and in turn, they challenged me to do the same. The question I asked myself was, “What if what Frankenstein did was normal? Not only normal, but what if it was necessary?” What would such a world look like? How would we reproduce? Often people speak of Frankenstein’s creature as though he was a child abandoned, so it was an easy step to considering a parent child relationship between creator and creature. However my husband and I often joke about how we “made” our kids as well. So, this is where the idea started, but as I wrote my narrator, it became clearer how, despite how unusual this birth was, it was still a birth. The parent would have just as much invested, if not more. In this sense, the driving force behind “The Art of Reproduction” shifted from its morose and unusual nature, to how tender and meaningful the act was. Or to put it another way, what fascinates me about this narrator’s process is not how different it is, but how familiar.

This story was originally published on April 5th 2019 in Daily Science Fiction, a pro-market, daily literary magazine, which has sadly shut its door. As of 9 Oct. 2024, their stories are no longer available on the web. This is one of my favorite pieces, and it saddened me to see it go offline, so I’m republishing here.

Clappers

--Mild Spoilers for Don't Fear the Reaper, sequel to My Heart is a Chainsaw, nothing outright-- 3.5 Stars

As they sit in the partially intact remains of what was almost Letha’s Terra Nova home (once upon a novel ago), Letha and Jade go back and forth over who could have stepped down behind Sydney in the famous bathroom stall scene in Scream. Letha argues it can’t have been Billy since he was just in the hall arguing with Syd moments before, so it must have been Stu, and further, how could anyone have known to include that private moment in Stab. When pressed for who that person is for her, Jade answers metaphorically, admitting it’s everyone who hurt her or didn’t help.

This small conversation, soon to be interrupted in true slasher form, is pivotal to understanding Don’t Fear the Reaper on multiple levels.

In this chaotic sequel, each chapter jumps to a new point of view, delaying the characters you’re likely most waiting to hear from to several chapters in, and only offering a summary of events between books through another high school essay, several chapters later still. The jumping around allows for a much more up close and personal experience of all the gruesome murders, addressing a critique often levied against My Heart is a Chainsaw. There should be no complaints here that the murders do not come often nor fast enough. But what this approach also allows for is for the reader to truly become the detective, the question asker, the person trying to tie the timeline together in a way that not a single other character in the book can. Much like a viewer asking if Stu really had time to run and change shoes after scaring Syd in the bathroom, or knowing it can't have been Billy because he just didn't have the means, readers of Reaper, if they’re paying attention, will be trying to count the unmarked minutes and hours between cuts. Trying to put a map of Proofrock together in their heads. The timeline and details feel difficult to thread together, but especially if you're clinging to the red herring bent Chapter 1 and 2 (and even the epitaph) are devoted to.

If sequels need to up the ante, then no one should be expecting the slasher on a platter, Dark Mill South, to be the real, or at least only, culprit. Yet the book does a very good job of making it seem so, and the characters do a damn good job falling for it themselves, and to be fair. Dark Mill South does deliver. But if you are paying attention, the small details just don't add up. And the author doesn't want them to.

However, it isn't just about learning who is in that bathroom stall, it’s about who you want to be or fear to be there. Jade’s metaphorical answer. Which is another theme from this conversation that permeates the book. Revenge, inaction, and the seemingly mundane villains we put up with on the daily, excusing, questioning, or even ignoring, their behavior. It is easy to see why Jade finds herself drawn in by the slasher mentality. There are clear cut rules and a monster who makes no mistake of keeping the truth hidden too long. There is always a reveal, a confrontation, a final girl hero. Everyone knows what the slasher is doing is wrong, and the town bands together to hide or fight. In ways they just never do for the monsters we live with.

So, in that respect, it is also easy to see why so many characters from Proofrock find themselves wrapped up in that same slasher mentality. For some it is the cultural psychology of having a girl obsessed with slashers warn you a slasher is coming, no one listening, and then dying by massacre. You too might take a second look at the source material that let her see what no one else could. But there is also a new history teacher in town, obsessed with slashers and serial killers, turning Jade's old essays into primary source material for his history students, taking advantage of them in more ways than one, to feed his glib obsession. You have Letha, feeling like she would have been a better final girl if she had only prepared for the future instead of getting hung up on the past, and who also needs a distraction wrought with rules to make sense of what is left of life. There are people obsessed with Jade, haunted by the events, and stuck inside themselves. We also get frequent high school essays from Gal, forced to analyze a horror she lived through for high school credit. So the horror references are constant, like the first book, but come from all sorts of different angles, mixed up with different contexts. Realistically, not every character thinks this way or gets the references, but they find themselves in the minority, at least of the ones we focus on. And while the perspectives from Jade's mom, Kimmy, are special in part because of this, they also are a welcome grounding in reality that we don't quite get enough of.

It's a messy delicate balance, this new structure, mirroring the remains, nay the ruins, left behind in the wake of the Independence Day Massacre. It's a new approach to Indian Lake that both gives and takes, but perhaps ends up taking more than it gives. While Reaper held my attention and there were spots I'd of been reluctant to have to pause my reading, it lacks some of the suspense and a lot of the thrill of its predecessor. And it certainly lacks the revving chainsaw heart.

Part of the flaw is how Jade and Letha accidentally bring what should have likely remained a distraction into main focus, giving the climax over to Dark Mill South, and allowing the far more interesting, complex, emotional culprits to fall to the wayside of inner monologue and supposition. Save one shocking moment we don’t get to see the end of. I get there is probably a point to this shift in focus. That realistically not all killers have high goals and mythical means. That some are just brutal. That some just need you to be in the right place at the wrong time. But that point could have been better made without sacrificing the mystery and thrill of discovery that made the end of Chainsaw thrive.

I keep comparing Reaper to Chainsaw, which in some ways is unfair, given that it can’t be that, doesn’t want to be that, doesn’t need to be that, and is much better left stitching together the fleshy pieces that the raw cuts of Chainsaw left behind. But, there it is, isn’t it? Reaper doesn’t, can’t, exist without Chainsaw (though it's possible to read without having read the first, I wouldn't recommend it). Like that strange clump of mutilated meat on the underside of the pier, starving for blood, what makes it frightening is not what it is, but how it might bring what was back to life. As a reader, I cling to Reaper for those shreds of what it was, fascinated by the way it’s trying to stitch itself back together. Instead, it only falls further apart, disintegrating like lake water and memories.

In some ways, it feels like it’s trying so hard to not be a predictable sequel, or go down tempting rabbit holes that feel out paced with possibility — that it ends up doing nothing notable instead. There’s all this boiling potential from traumatized identical twins, the return of ghosts, the desire to see the town slashed for more reasons than one person can hold — and it all fizzles out to strong arm the hard-to-kill serial killer who hasn’t earned that slasher strength.

Even the final moments, where Jade, some would argue needlessly, turns herself in trying to protect someone else, trying to allow that person to exist to protect what she has left here, are given to us in a postscript essay which dances around the truth and motivations of two other guilty parties. It lacks the power of the primal realization Jade has at the end of the first book, and sure, she’s trying to be Jennifer now, or at least, take only the good parts of Jade, trying to be more mature, giving of herself in the way she always has and always will because no one ever gave it to her… but this quiet victory like all her victories get muted by the distant observations of others. And while it's a song well sung in the first book, it feels more like a chain she’s looped around her own legs here.

Don’t get me wrong. There’s still a lot to admire here. The structural and thematic attempts of questioning, burrowing, into the slasher while still delivering on the promises of one are admirable, and often handled well. The sheer shift from a single pov to one that bounces across the lake and back through town demonstrates well how trauma and tragedy and loss act more like bird shot than silver bullets meant specially for a single person's monster. And if you’re into the gore and fight and shock and obvious nods and allusions to the craft, then this book delivers tenfold.

But if you’re a fan of the first, and were hoping the sequel would do all that without losing what made the original so special to begin with, you might find yourself a bit disappointed. If you prefer straightforward mysteries, and solving alongside your main character amateur sleuth, then the bouncing pov may additionally frustrate more than it intrigues. And if you’re looking for another embracing of both the mortal and immoral worlds of slashers, you’ll find this installment, well, a bit off balance.

As for this reader, I’m not done with Graham Jones nor Indian Lake. But I will be expecting more from the next installment to keep going. And I hope between this book and the next, our talented author has rediscovered that chainsaw’s pull cord, wrapped it around his fingers, and tugged, hard.

Today I just felt like creating something. To play. To explore imagery and text. 

To jack around on Canva. 

So, I decided to desgin poems, writing them as I designed the page around them or vice versa. It was fun and got some ideas flowing. 

In the utmost of tropes, they're poems about creating and writing (so original I know), but the point was to explore and have some fun, and for poems about writing they're better than they could have been. 

NaPoWriMo Poem 5: "Sometimes"

For this poem, I tried to apply images in the background that represented different concepts from each line of the poem. Some are more abstract while others are a bit on the nose, but I wanted them to blend together a bit while each being distinctly their own thing. It was the first one I wrote, so the design came after the fact. It looks pretty much like something you'd see created on canva I think. But, like I said, I just wanted to PLAY. And this poem let me do that, sorting through all the fun little graphics and making everythign a shade of my favorite color. That said, I really like the final two lines.

Sometimes words flow through my fingers
Sometimes colors expode inside my head

Sometimes the world is crushed inside me
Sometimes I'm crushed inside the world

Sometimes the only release is this

Something playful, something pretty
Something feeling, something lonely
Something bouncy, something still

Sometimes I don't know what's inside of me
until its out here in the air
where we can see it, breathe it
feel it beating

This something there I didn't make
but simply let escape
NaPoWriMo 6 "Flow State"

So, the first two lines of this poem were actually originally the first few lines of the last poem, but once I got on the "sometimes" kick they didn't fit any more, but I still liked them, so I used them to inspire my canvas for the next poem. I made my canvas with 3 different photos of ink spills, playing with the filters until I had the color how I wanted, and then setting them to different levels of transparency and overlaying them. This poem, as is usual when I do multiple poems, I feel is a bit better than the last. It's a single sentence and has some more concrete imagery going for it, making the actual conversation of creating more metaphorical, I guess. 

I want to press imagination to paper
watch it bleed
over the edges

sink into the meditation
of creating life
line by line

letting reality blur
and smudge 
beneath my fingers

until I awake
with dirty fingernails

and inhale the world
anew.

NaPoWriMo 7: "Writing"

Oooo what a creative title, lol. Well, given the weird way the poem itself is written, having a clear, plain title seemed necessary. I wanted to do this last one based on an image I found in Canva. I was hoping to find, like, a girl standing alone, or something poetic; instead I found this picture of a pen and puzzled over if they were trying to make the ink look like blood when it still clearly looked like ink, since it was on a cloth. And then I got to wondering if I could make the typed text look as if it was actually written, at least to some degree, on the cloth pictured. Poem wise, the blood imagery stayed with me, and with a few effects, I think I did a pretty good job making the text look like it's somewhat on the cloth, "good" at least for playing around on canva for bit on a Friday night. Anyway, I liked this idea of just a viseral representation of the staying "Writing is easy, you just sit down at a typewriter, open a vein and bleed." Which, by the by, is apparantly attributed to a sports writer Hemmingway liked, and not a Hemmingway original. But I digress. Here's the poem.

prick by prick
drip by drop by drip
tip by tap by tip
it pours
from pores

beat by beat by beat
breath by breath -- and breathe
pump and push and pump
emptying the veins


It's good to remember to play. That's part of what NaPoWriMo is all about. I have a ton of work waiting for me back in reality, and a household to run on my own (out of towns spouse) with two hyper boys and a dog who needs diabetic care. A stack of stories waiting for revision and submission to the proper homes. Laundry. 

Not everything has to be so serious. 

We deserve to let go for an hour or two. Get our hands dirty. Make something that makes us happy in the moment, and pin it to our fridge. 

 In honor of National Poetry Month, I asked ChatGPT to write a poem about me. 

It called me an "ethereal sprite." 😆 Suffice to say, it apparntly thinks extremely highly about me... or is deeply sarcastic........ 

That said, I'm impressed that it recognized I was an author. And whatever is out there about me, the algorithm made it positive and naturey. Whatever the quality, it got some things "right" in sense that AI doesn't always do, mainly of my roaming nature and looking for stories everywhere, but it could have pulled that from a bio or post. 

Anyway... I asked the Adobe Express AI to make an image of an ethereal sprite roaming the mountains and valleys, as I apparantly do....  AI's definition of ethereal... was... disturbing. But I've included some of the images here that I liked (some after applying a few additional filters for materials, concepts, and movement) and which didn't look evil. 

The poem itself is a bit heavy handed, and it's weird how overly passionate it is about my skill and insight knowing that it's not coming from an emotional place of any kind. There's something a bit... toss a coin to your witcher about it. 

[[ETA: After doing a few more, I realized since it is a poem, it is approaching the names as fictional characters. And so, its intreptation is largely influenced by how it interprets the name. ]]

But... for curiosity sake. Here it is. 

I also asked ChatGPT to title the poem it wrote:

"Song of Meagan Noel Hart."

In shadows cast by the crescent moon's soft light,There dances Meagan, in the velvet night.With eyes aglow like stars in midnight's hue,She weaves her tales, both old and new.

A spirit free, with laughter's gentle breeze,She paints the world with colors as she please.In every step, a melody untold,In every word, a story to unfold.

Meagan Noel Hart, a name that sings,Of passion's fire and the joy it brings.With grace she moves through life's winding maze,Her spirit fierce, ablaze with endless blaze.

In her, the whispers of the forest dwell,The secrets of the ocean's ancient spell.For she is nature's child, wild and true,In her embrace, the world feels anew.

Through valleys deep and mountains high she'll roam,Her spirit soaring, never tied to home.For Meagan Noel Hart, the world's her stage,And every moment, a new chapter on the page.

So let us raise a toast to this ethereal sprite,Whose presence fills the darkest night with light.In her, we find the magic of the art,For she is poetry embodied—Meagan Noel Hart.

Anyway, I think it's good to play with these tools from time to time. To see what they can do and what they can't. They're usually good for a laugh or getting me inspired to do my own thing. 

"Dan Dunn, Secret Operative 48," Brownsville Herald (Brownsville, TX), August 23, 1936.

A pantoum poem is a poem where the 2nd and 4th line of each stanza, are repeated as the 1st and 3rd line of the following stanze, until you get to the end. When you get to the end, you can reuse the unused lines from the first stanza with final repeated lines. Though some people will mix it up. A work friend is going through some pretty bizarre medical stuff right now, and so it's on my mind, those of us who are unlucky enough to be interesting to doctors, and it got me thinking about the weeks leading up to losing my baby, and how many times I was told "I've never seen this before." I started writing the poem like that, but I wanted a repetition, and thought of the pantoum because I had my students write one earlier this semester. It worked strangely well. I think really I own another verse in there honeslty, but I'm trying to get to bed at a decent time tonight.
NAPOWRIMO24: Poem 4 
 "I've never seen this before." 
 I've never seen this before, says the doctor.  Woah, says the ultrasound technician. I'm sorry. 
 Says the doctor, We're going to need to run some more tests.  I'm sorry.  This is the specialist's number. 
 We're going to need to run some more tests.  This is quite an unusally large growth.  This is the specialist's number.  This is unprecedented. 
 This is quite an unsually large growth.  Do you know the percentages, the chances? This is unprecedented.  Dangerous. 
 Do you know the percentages, the chances? A surgery like that just isn't possible.  Dangerous.  There's nothing we can do. 
A surgery like that just isn't possible, either. There's nothing we can do. Insurance won't cover the safest option. Either you wait and possibly die because insurance won't cover the safest option or you scrape together what you can to do what you don't want to. 
You wait and possibly die because its hard to gather that much money so fastor you scrape togehter what you can to do what you don't want toeven if you still must wait and possibly die 
its hard to gather that much money so fast family and friends are miricles and angels even if you still must wait and possibly die at least you know you're loved. 
Family and friends are miricles and angelsWoah, says the ultrasound technianat least you know you're loved. I've never seen this before. 

NAPWRIMO24: Poem 2

"How to Make the Most of It"

Find yourself the people 
who revel in the mundane
who stop walking to 
watch the bugs

Find yourself the people
who elate in all the weird
who always choose
the handmade mug

Find yourself the people
who whisper secrets like they're treasures
who watch raindrops like they're dancers
who stop and say, look at that moon
and listen to every stranger's story

Find yourself the people
who prefer a book in a nook
but still dance to a room full of music
who push your limits 
but never your bounderies

Find yourself in the people
who know just how to say your name
and seem to know that life
is in the living 
and the living is in all seconds in between

From the article "Good Genese are Nice, by Joy is Better"
For the next poem, I took the article "Good Genes are Nice, but Joy is Better" and turned it into a poem by selecting phrases in chornological order. 

NAPOWRIMO24: Poem 3

"Happiness"

one of the world's longest studies of adult life
a cornacopia of data

studied 
health trajectories
broader lives
triumpsh
failures
startling lessons

tending to your relationships
is a form of self-care too.
the revelation

more than money
or fame
ties protect people 
delay mental and phsyical decline
better than social class, IQ, 
or even genes

warm relationships
live longer and happier
and
count on each other
when the going got tough

aging starts at birth
aging is a continuous process
healthy aging is relationships,
relationships,
relationships

it's easy to get isolated
to get caught up in work
try to pay more attention

 What is an inactive blog except just another notebook filled with thoughts, even if one you bothered to revise? 

A lot has happened in the past few years. Hitting COVID still full of grief, still full of hate for a body I felt had betrayed me, one that still refused to work as it should, was... both a blessing and a curse. In some ways, it felt as if the world was grieving with me. In others, it allowed me an extended period to avoid any attempt at returning to normal. 

Because normal no longer existed. 

I could hide behind a screen, throw myself into work, worry endlessly about my children and childcare, and argue that my broken body didn't matter if no one had to see it. If I didn't have to use it in the same ways. Falling down in grocery store asiles reaching for the top shelf, aside. 

My 2019 surgeries resulted in a hernia, which needed another surgery, which was put off for nearly a year because of COVID dealys. Another form of limbo piled on to the perpetual limbo we were all living. This was all supposed to be temporary. 

When things started to return to normal schedules, normal expectations about leaving the house, about interacting, about dressing in real pants, I felt left behind. How dare the world move on and heal when I was still struggling to survive?

But I went through the motions. And while much had returned to normal, much had not. The extra workload I'd taken on over the pandemic did not go down, and truth be told I had already been doing too much. Too much because I'm me and can't say no? Too much because it was a welcome distraction? A busy mind can't easily cry? 

But a new form of depression was creeping in. I was no longer enjoying the things I most enjoyed. I was getting burned out. Because being burned out on life in general apparantly wasn't enough. 

My requests for help, for dispersed responsibilities, course releases, or at least a raise to recognize the additional labor, were all denied. 

I nearly left a job I love, colleagues I adore. 

But a last minute meeting changed... not everything, but enough to make the best kind of difference. 

And I stayed. 

But I was still mentally and emotionally wiped. 

I've spent the past year intentionally doing as little as possible. So many summer days were whittled away doing nothing more than breathing, dreaming, story binging. So many typical responsibilities, let go. I learned to say no.  

I wrote, shortly after losing Lettie, that some part of me would die with her. I confirmed that it had. While I had done what I could to keep myself on this Earth for my boys... I'd only succeeded physically. 

While I felt like I was doing so much, looking back, I see how absent I was. These large spaces of disengagement, of working late, of sleeping early. Removed. Sometimes physically, but mostly mentally. There but not there. Too tierd, always too too tierd. And often phsycially incapable of doing what I once had as a mother. They never lost my love, but they had lost my prescence. Despite all the things I was doing outside the house, I was still drowning. 

Sometimes drowning looks like swimming, a playful thrashing. 

It wasn't all for naught. There were bright moments, highlights, days I felt more alive than others.

Weirdly, in some unexpected ways, my struggles made me a better teacher. I kept expecting my evaluations to plummet. Instead, they stayed steady or improved. I had let go of trying to prepare anyone for the cruel inflexibility of the world as I had been taught. I had embraced grace, and every possible way I could give it. For I had received it from so many I loved in 2019, so many I worked with, and I could no longer fathom a world in which it could not be given. Radically arguing that instead of designing classes on what we've been told the world is, designing them on what the world should be.

I opened myself up and learned how much my students too were hurting. Their loses, their struggles, their mental health. And this did not exclude my own children, who needed so much support in school, through new diagnosis, through new growing pains. But throwing myself into helping others, was not the healing I needed. And served me no extra dosing of energy for taking care of anyone, least of all myself.  

And, my body continued to rebel against me. Bad reactions to medicines and birth control. Bad healing. An inability to lose weight no matter how hard it felt like I was trying, and I had so little effort left to give. Constantly increasing migraines which became the norm. A string of doctors who seemed to never quite understand. A long term side effect from COVID, which I eventually caught despite my best efforts: Trouble breating. Still trouble breathing. Does this inhaler do anything?

And mental health... while I had been required to go to grief thearpy in 2019, I was assigned a therapist, who, while I could tell she cared, she literally just did not have the time for me. Those appointments didn't last long, neighter by appointment or continutation. By 2020, they were done.

A bad start? A doubling down on bad news? A body that couldn't keep up? It was all too much. 

I nearly broke entirely last year. 

And then, the rest. The saying no. The finding of empty time. 

Which gave me some space to address a few physcial issues, finally, though not all. And mentally, so much is better now, but I'm still finding my footing. Still reconnecting with me. 

But this took, no joke, 10 months. I can't imagine recovering from burn out with a normal work schedule, yet that is the reality for most. I'm grateful for the time I had, the space I was given. Yet, even still, it's weird and difficult adjusting to a schedule where everything isn't high priority. 

But it also means having space to look back. To realize how much I lost, gave up on, and forgot about. The pieces of me left behind just trying to survive.

This summer, it will have been five years since everything fell apart, and I'm finally ready to really start to heal. To try. And step one is an assessment of all that's fallen apart in the wake of my grief. I've lost of lot of myself, and that includes my passion, my writing, my ability to juggle expectations like a magician. But I've learned a lot as well. 

And I'm writing again because... it's a part of me, that while dormant from time to time, never really dies. And because I'll never regain or rebuild or rediscover or newly discover anything if I don't start trying. Even if it's just another false start. Even if not. Even if it's quite a climb ahead. 

By Shadowtuga, Deviant Art

In writing, I often compare a good transition to a shift in color, a blending from one point to the next, so subtle and inperceptable that we don't realize we're heading somewhere new until we're there. 
But it begs the question of "the line," the moment or shift where point A becomes point B. This must happen, right? Where one idea or state ceases to exist at all. 
This poem began just thinking of the phrase "the spaces inbetween" and what that really means, and it took a turn from there. When might we wonder about that point or moment in an otherwise imperceptable transition?
The picture I found afterwards, but I like the sentiment here. The space between never and again can mean a lot of things, but its that ineffable shift from one opposing state to another.  
Photo by Akuma Aizawa

NAPoWriMo24 1:

"The Space Where"

Have you thought about transitions

the awkwardness of passing through

blending dissolutions slipping forward

but also steps back, too

fickle as the Spring

Have you thought about the in between

the spaces there

the gaps in our intentions

the emptiness connecting all the lines

how the horizon never really touches sky

I linger on the middling

somewhere between start and end

wondering the moment

the gap or step or fickle shift

where I stopped loving you

Iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit's NaPoWriMo! 

I know, I know, it's been awhile. My blog's been hiding under a little rock, occasionally poking up to say, here's some old, revised content. I did actually write a post addressing this, that I'll be publishing soon, but whether I rise to the challenge or not, I don't usaully miss a good NaPoWriMo kick off, even if belated. 

The funny thing is, for the enitre second half of March, I was like, NaPoWriMo is coming! And then lost my steam by April 1st. Le, shrug. 

But it's only 8 days in, which means there is plenty of time to catch up. 

For those of you new to NaPoWriMo, it's essentially a poetry writing challenge to celebrate National Poetry Month wherein you try to write a poem for every day within in the month. Careful, read that again. A poem for every day, not a poem everyday. Though when I first started doing NaPo I aimed for a poem a day. And it really did change the way I viewed poetry, most of all my own. 

I've had a rough, ROUGH, five years and for the first bit in a long, long bit, I'm feeling much more me. And since my first attempt at NaPo was so rewarding, I figured this would be a good way to get back into regular writing, and hopefully regular posting (even if sporadic has always been my "normal" style, it's still better than a sparse regurgitated 3 posts over two years... or whatever the precise number there was.)

For more on NaPoWriMo or to hang out with poets cooler than me, check out the official site: https://www.napowrimo.net/ 

And remember the rules:

1. Write 30 poems. 

2. Try something new. 

3. Share the poems, at least sometimes. 

That's it for today... just an invitation to play. But I'll get to sharing what I've got tomorrow. Will you?