digging in mud

...
It's not just soft, it's smooth and plastic, though plastic would not describe mud well in those days. Smooth if there are no rocks or splinters in the aggregate.
Mud soothes.

Some wrapped it on a bee sting.
That or damp bicarbonate of soda.
To draw out the poison.
Both were muddy enough to pinch onto that stick of a finger, but not too wet or too dry, because the patch would slip and drip off or crumble to no use.

The bee was attending to pollen when I squashed it and how my foot swelled and my hand that other time. Swollen to such a concern that I would have taken my daughter to the ER. The reaction suggested other things. Breathing. But breath came in and out steadily while I couldn't sleep. Scared of that thing that was so swollen, my foot or hand or finger.

Stick it in the sink in cold water in the night, let it run, summer moon lighting the open window. Jump up and down so as not to scratch, for the itch was powerful enough to keep you awake, but quietly, jump quietly. The family is sleeping on beds and couches out where we are altogether in the guest house at my grandmother's. And my grandfather's, but he was passive, asleep in the red leather chair down the hill, while we tried to make money renting our house. Those people smashed my red china doll and let the pool go.

At school soak a mud colored paper towel, fibers stretching and breaking down to a pulp, stick it like a bandaid clinging to my not so thin finger. And wish you were home in that heat, not in your desk sweltering, a faint threatening, dabbing the wet mushy paper on your forehead, over and over, wetting it again.

Silly girl, bee stings, breathing, heat exhaustion, stop this silliness.

This is nothing next to a father going insane and a mother sloppy drunk, whispering something to other men, not my father, with a door locked to make it suspicious, to survive, to keep going for the girl who's hand itched so powerfully. terribly all night long in the other room.


...

Sliding Down

Sliding.

Down is no good but for sliding.
Up is ok except for mania.
Even is just plain dull, but catatonic is worse.

Isolation in a black tank ruins your perceptions, someone studied.
Prisoners in isolation go crazy.

Send socially unfit humans to be packed in cages; then they go crazy so put them in solitary confinement where they slide through the inescapable cement; down below the topsoil where nothing lives.

I want isolation.
Social isolation.
Interacting, I am nowhere, somewhere below the topsoil, wishing a huge abyss would appear to slide me away, leaving behind babbling incoherency and/or visibility.

Let me go, let me slide down, like children zipping down a winding slide on the playground, two at a time, though it's against the rules. No running, no games of tag near the jungle gym. No swinging left, only right so no one gets bumped, lest someone is injured in play. No bad words, no hurting shouts of denigration, no play fighting.

You know it, but you do it.
I do it again.
The wrong thing.
I want to say, "I didn't know!", but I had an inkling.

Yesterday I learned that we are subjugated to our supervisors. They may place us in this class or that, teens, young adults, against your will, infants, preschoolers. Where do I fit best I think, sitting in offices listening, supporting the bad childhoods of the little smart mouths.

How do little ones know about bad childhoods? Where did they hear they're having one. Childhood is sweet ignorance, not self knowledge of a bad life.

Hit where it hurts. No. Because never, never to let another child hurt cannot be done. "You hurt your family, who love you very much, but they don't like you, so cry for that now, because discipline opens that door."

Sliding down first, bracing with feet rubbery with basketball soles, then climbing up to hysteria, to the top screaming, throwing flaming, fiery play weapons. Now that will solve it all.

...

Black Drizzle

...
You sneak in, through some signal, though how you two figured it out, who knows. You, you planned this deceit, breaking a trust that was rusted brittle. Don't take this child, who isn't yours, in narcissism.

Belonging cannot be stolen.

You two go out in the night, cold, slipping into black drizzle, no footprints visible in silver damp. Off in the dark for nonsensical pleasure, but it's one sided can't you see that?

Dragged back. You bring back a wrung out child, too exhausted for the next day's life.

Selfishly you break hearts, each one. In spite, you are not aware of the core bond inside, deeper than the gut, deeper than the heart, the marrow. You don't know this can't work.

Except for this.

You leave exhaustion wherever you were.

We send the bloodhound, millions of receptors tracking, none finding the revenge steps. Panting home to wait.


...

Sand

...
What is it about a sandy,
fenced-off piece of land.
...
Sugar sandy in the wind. Chocolate sandy in the rain. Dusty is the real word, but why use dusty when food is available. Watery, swirling sand, under hard hooves, changes each step to a slipper quiet, a tiptoe, of the 12oo lb. beast.
...
I float, thinking, on bobbing waves, sun soaking, easy.
...
Old Frankie, on the ranch all his life, walks with a very slight totter, huffing at the work. I gather up the reins. Chins? In for him, up for me. First the signal. With a heel. Then we glide over days; the fusses, the fidgets, the mistakes. We ride above foggy sand, dreaming of floating.
...
Floating on the Earth.
...
Float, while Earth floats
on it's hot orange crust!

...