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Measure a thousand times and cut once. The mantra of a person who is certain of their task.
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I don’t remember where I was the first time I did it, not the color of the room or the décor. I don’t remember the time of day or whether there was music or silence.
What I do remember is the feeling – the awkward placement of my thumb and forefinger backwards over the handle of the scissors and how quickly the coldness of the blade crossing over my skin changed to hot blood. And then that strange sense of relief, as if there was light entering into me through a passage I created.
I have twenty-nine visible scars and countless numbers faded away, most of them evenly spaced and leaning at the same angles – the mathematics of my mistakes. Each one had a purpose and a exactness, each one created to release some suffocation from my body.
There have been a few haphazard slopes, a break from my usual surgical precision. They splay and curve across with no method, the combat wounds of someone with no time to waste.
I remember thinking that this was how a blood transfusion must feel: slowly, slowly drained and then full of something new, something uninfected, like sunlight through an open window.
*
She remembers reading somewhere, “The only way to find true happiness is to risk being completely cut open.”
The only way. The only way. She says it in her head over and over like a song, played out to the drum of her pulse. There is not one drop of blood left inside her veins that does not throb to this chant. The only way. The only way.
*
A shark can detect a single drop of blood in 25 million drops of water and can sense the electricity emitted from living creatures.
I think about being a shark, and how I might have been one once.
Every person I have ever loved and who has loved me is inside me somewhere, pulsing through my veins, living in my body. I can feel their electricity beating in my heart, keeping the rhythm steady.
Sometimes I wish they’d let me rest.
*
This is the geography of a life. Simple rhythms and hidden avenues of air in the veins where there should be blood.
This is the secret structure of the world. Everyone treading and pacing over their pain, keeping the heart beat steady in the people we love so we won’t have to be alone while our bodies decay in slow motion, like rotting cargoes abandoned in the ocean.
Our hearts don’t beat on their own; we keep each other’s rhythms.
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We all have thunderstorms, some that brood for heavy hours. And I let mine pour out of me, to feel the quiet fill me up.
What choices can I make without knowing what it is to rest, always awake to the never-ending thumping of the heart and the rushing of the blood around my body carrying all the people who have loved me and whom I have loved.
Each year that we grow older, our skin becomes more translucent, like a bare bulb, displaying the infinity of thunderstorms and all the love that courses through our veins.
Pour them out. Pour them out. It’s the only way.[© 2010 Sophia Nelson]
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i need $40 for this dress.
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[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]The song that plays during the Game of Thrones trailer.
TitleVengeance -
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Roosevelt my darlin’ :)
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2 Year Anniversary/Heat
the noise from the last parade is rising up in me
like molten rock, this last heat wave crushing my breath
this last summer, the final stick of wood placed on the pile
the stars we wish on have been dead for thousands of years
fiery explosions pre-dating me and you and us
we burn off our fingerprints in the bonfire
so we never have to suffer the same knowing of another
so no one can name us again
it’s been a long, hot disappointment
the summer around me in rapid oxidation
and you, my chronic salamander eating up the fire
you, my misguide mania, you
my unsolvable math problem, you
my Moonlight Sonata on an untuned piano, you
the long stairway, the weak heart, the tar in my lungs, the steam in the cracks of the streets
you are the bells in the air on lonely, hot Sundays[© 2010 Sophia Nelson]
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Star
I was so lost when I moved to this city,
willowing and wide, dirty like a dial tone.
I thought I’d find out the truth,
like when we got into that car crash
in the parking lot. I knew what was important,
what was true, when I felt the blood pool up
above my eyelid, and you swore and slammed your fists
against the steering wheel.
I remember thinking about stars and solar systems and the lights
on my mother’s Christmas tree,
as you unbuckled my seat belt and pulled me out onto the grass.
I think I must have been a star once.
The blood trickled all the way down the side of my face,
little drops on my sneakers, and running down my hands
But all I felt was light.[© 2010 Sophia Nelson]
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First day of spring
I keep thinking about
the end of autumn
-Basho Matsuo
I want to look at the world the way a bird eats a berry,
to hear the perfect sound of a bluejay again
and beat my heart along with the spring.
You knew me better as a cardinal
on a backdrop of snow. Here I am nowbroadly disappointed and biting in half these moments
like inevitable fruits. They split and whisper of a soul
that didn’t turn out right, the crunch of the husk
still vibrates in my ears and the juice stains my teeth.I could never be the right bird in the right tree,
always hiding in the sleeves of my coat,
clutching at my throat, killing the spring
to punish your patience. I took you by the elbow,
bellowed low over the bridge: No one comes to carry us
away from winter.[© 2010 Sophia Nelson]
It’s poetry night on Sophie’s tumblr. Feel free to read, critique, or ignore. I’m trying to work on some unfinished stuff.
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Over-eager got my stomach pumped,
still-faced and taciturn and all the people
stumbling around me, my mother walked her fingers
along my forehead like butterfly kisses.I felt I could breathe fire, spitting up bursts of fuel,
launching my guts out of my body like fireworks
and everybody terrified of me, a dragon
bloodthirsty, unconcerned and losing her mind.I have the impression of being drawn along
by a long conspiracy of coincidences that move
me closer to the worth of all my work –holding my breath, counting my toes,
cutting each line parallel to the next -
work that stops car wrecks from happening
and keeps my fingernails from falling off.Waking up again reminded me of some circle of hell
where the over-eager were banished, near-comatose
tapping out each of their hiccups and laughing
to keep from screaming.I just want to sit next to myself,
a ghost holding the hand of a body
full of oxygen.There are ten million ways to love yourself
and I could only think of one.[© 2010 Sophia Nelson]
More unfinished poetry. Needs tweaking. Opinions welcome.
