Candy you can take from strangers. Will you disentangle me?
flowing through pain, guilt, shame, gratitude, prayer, humility, strength, and yearnings.
And as I laid there I dreamt about this ramen in front of me now. And all the warmth and the spice. While I let her suction the hot glass cups and let them disentangle all that is everything wrong with me. Hot cups on my neck, on my back, on my supple facade with roots grown only underneath, proving everything hasn’t always been soft for me. There I laid. Completely adorned with needles. There I was punctured with promised relief.
There I was and all I had to do was lay and there I laid and there I laid and there I laid. But this time it’s my choice to be in a bed unmoving.
And there once I laid, during yoga nidra next to my beloved friend. The harshness of those visions came prodding from around the edges. Those memories that made me keep fluttering my eyes open to ensure I didn’t sink into the darknesses too deeply. I laid. And was met with twitching. Lump in throat. Teetering upon the tears and what it would mean to let them seep through the fractures. All from what insists on living within this body from this time last year. All that insists from this time last year. All that insists from every time since one time, and everytime thereafter, times I can’t seem to shed. My classifieds always tend to leak at some point.
But here lying under this heat lamp, covered in needles with eyes closed; nothing came prodding through darknesses. I wasn’t swallowing tears; they did not come as I expected them to, when I always expect all the same.
While these needles adorn me, my tears refuse to run.
I wish I refused.
I wish I ran.
She, my acupuncturist, asked about: my pain. my body. my job. my dogs. Am I still in therapy? I asked about her daughter’s freshman year in college. I’m happy to hear it went mostly well. Mine did not. “California is so far.” I say to her, stating the obvious. I think about how I wouldn’t have survived so young so far from home. Not that I always have survived so well so close.
I can tell my acupuncturist is a good mother. I can just tell.
And I’m thankful the only thing or person she didn’t ask me about as I laid in that bed was him. The things that irritated and disappointed me about him equally made her groan and lament and I told her so little. Perhaps she is all too familiar with the sort. The last time I laid with heat lamp, cups, and needles, him and I were not strangers. We were something to each other. I can’t stop wondering if I’m still something to him.
So Thank God she’s a mother. And Thank God she’s a good one. Thank God she’s an acupuncturist and thank God she’s a good one. She is well-versed in listening to aches.
I haven’t been listening to my aches. If I did it wouldn’t have been 7 months, 8 months? Since I laid on this bed again with needles adorned trying to find a weekly fix. Because of my classifieds I’ve been left all tangled up underneath and everyday I wake with pain all under. Everyday I’ve been left with constant reminders of the violation after violation over the years. And here I am left with the responsibility of healing. This is what I’m left with. I am the house. I am the house keeper. I am the damage and I am undone. I am disordered. I am in progress. I am left with all of this pain and what am I to do. What am I to do? What. Am. I. To. Do. And my hip flexors scream.
The needles and the cups are free from my surface and now my body lays disentangled and free. I am left alone to dress myself. But that’s the last thing I want to do. I rise and discover myself again. I have never looked so fucking sexy in my life. Here in this huge mirror. In my nudity. In my shape. In supple skin. In white walls so clean and new I emerge from myself. In the soft 7pm summer sun, unburdened and on my knees, I look at her looking at me, born anew. 8 months of burdens unburdened. And everything else underneath and underneath. I sit and my hips don’t scream. I rise and my back doesn’t ache. My desire for her grows. She’s an angel isn’t she.
I disentangle first my many necklaces I adorn myself with daily, and I can’t help steal glances at her skin. And it’s so knotted up that I’m still trying to get free themselves of each other in the elevator, and as I walk to the bus stop, and as I sit, I’m still unmaking that mess. But I feel nothing like it anymore. Tension with her is high. And as I wait for the bus I sit and start to detangle my wire earbuds and again I think how my body feels nothing like those wires anymore.
I’m throbbing.
My phone dies on the bus but my earbuds remain in. I eavsdrop with my lover on the girl and hear her bestest gay say to her, “I just love vaping so much because it basically feels like eating… like sitting on the couch with a diet coke and a vape does the same thing as if I was eating like a bag of chips.” That part. A few 14, 15 year old girls in soccer uniforms, “Do you guys wanna see my fake ID?... Okay but I don’t want you to see the picture… Yeah my parents paid for it.”
I look to my lover and laugh and the lover is myself.
And when I make it to my bedroom I prepare to break the tension. I pull it out the dresser. I undress. And I get down on my knees and look her all over. She is as irresistible as she was in the office and there on my knees in my mirror I look into her eyes and I fuck myself so good and am reminded of what a good fuck I am. Who is this girl in the mirror? I haven’t touched her in months. Who is this girl in the mirror. I can’t look away. I feel high.
And eventually when I go and lay in the bed. And I couldn’t see her anymore. It was ruined. Because then I thought about all that sex and the classified that wasn’t with myself. I wasn’t with myself, I was with the shadows I thought needles can shake. When I look into the air or, God forbid the dark, I can’t ever predict what clouds may pass, what storms will brew. Who is this girl in the mirror. Who was that girl before.
And now, as I write here on this envelope, on this napkin sat, in front of this ramen I envisioned in my acupuncture and cupping semi-conscious dreams. Here as I sit, in front of a dream so tangible: I just broke into prayer.
I’m sipping this ramen, chewing these noodles. And now I am swallowing tears again.
I dreamed of drinking this hot, spicy soup.
And now here I sit, two days from the thought, sipping it.
It’s too easy. My life is so easy. Everything is made so easy for me. How could I be made not to believe in miracles?
To materialize a dream so simple should have so much weight, and how many times have I let luxuries such as these pass me by without a thank you to the powers that be? I'm so full of gratitude, sometimes it feels like im choking on it. The power that I possess? To dream of a meal. And then so easily sit down and eat it. And so I sit here and I pray in amazement and forgive me for not thanking you every time. For some reason on this earth, I have the ease in life to dream about a meal then 2 days after I eat it. I spend money at a restaurant and don’t worry I that I won’t be able to go to another restaurant anytime soon. I spend money without worry all the time. I stop acupuncture with no worry I can return to that treatment. What did I do to deserve such luxury and ease in a world in which so many can’t. What did I do to deserve methods to appease my personal sufferings. Nothing, but here I am.
I pause and break into prayer. I pause and swallow my tears. They should be easy to swallow.
I am grateful that this ramen is full of ginger. It reminds me of my grandfather. My grandfather gave out ginger candies to family and to anyone who passed by his stoop. And I don’t know why. It’s one of the only things I heard him say; in that thick Jamaican accent: he handed me 3 or 1 or 5 huge hard ginger candies. Too big and too hard for a child my size.
It is okay to take candy from this kind of stranger. All my grandparents were and are strangers to me.
I am so grateful this soup is spicy. And Thank God it holds ginger in this broth. Thank God. Thank God. I hope so deeply my grandparents (deserving) are very well and rested in whatever kingdom could lay beyond. With whatever ancestors that are even more strangers to me, their stories are secrets kept from me, in whatever kingdom lays beyond. It is okay to take candy from this kind of stranger.
Maybe they’re holding me safe in ginger. In jerk seasoning and curries. When I suck it all off the bone. In the bass and in the drumbeats and when I whine my hips. In ocean waves they once crossed over. Maybe they watch me from the moon. And greet me when I sip hot tea. And caress me with the hot sun. Then choose to stick by me in my bag and my hair by way of the sands. And maybe that’s why my heart swells when I think of these. Maybe that’s why the sweet kind of tears then appear just behind my eyes. Why they evolve when I look into hot soup and with the taste of ginger all I see is a blessing.
I look around me these days and all I see is these comforts and luxuries and blessings. All I see is blessings and whiplash into: how am I the one holding them? How many times did my grandmother, my grandfather, my greats and great greats and great great greats once looked into bowls of soup and see blessings. I wouldn’t know.
I wouldn’t know.
I wish I knew my islands well and maybe I wouldn’t be so lost. I don’t speak my mother tongue. I don’t know my motherlands. My family is a bit barren.
When I was nine, I realized my grandmother wasn’t a zombie. Just as we did every week, we made the pilgrimage from North Jersey to East Flatbush so my mother could help take care of her mother. When I think of my grandmother, I think of mumbling and murmurs. I smell that distinct staleness. I see eyes glossed over that don’t seem to see. I see trembles and shakes. I see someone always lifting her to stand. To walk her to the bathroom and help her. And all I hear is that continuous moan, mumble, and groan that those with Alzheimer’s do. That the walking dazed and cold and confused must utter.
In my memory her skin is barely brown, it’s grey.
When I was nine. I walked into that apartment and there she sat unmoving. I gave her my routine hug and kiss that my mom told me and my little sister we had to do. But for the first time, she grabbed my hand. It was cold. I looked to my mom, scared. My grandmother had never taken any action towards me (in my memory). Ever. I didn’t know she was capable of agency. And here she was, grabbing my hand. I looked at my mother and recoiled from the cold, I tried to move away from what I couldn’t understand.
Shouldn’t you run when the zombie has her in your grasp?
My mother said in her warmth, “She wants you to sit with her.” Or something of the sort. To me, it sounded like, “She loves you.” So I let that strange cold hand hold mine. I wonder what my grandmother was like when she was alive.
When I was a baby, everyone said she held me. She cared for me. But in all my conscious memory, she was merely that mumbling presence.
But it’s okay to take candy from this kind of stranger.
When my mom speaks of my father’s childhood, when my father speaks of his childhood, the punch they throw most often is how regularly his fridge remained empty. My parents are not strangers to me. I never knew of such a possibility as a child. An empty fridge. My father made sure of it. He would never be like him.
When I think of myself as a child, I never think of
a lack thereof. When I think of me as a child. I’ve never thought, of lack thereof. I was warm. In imagination. Always at play, always writing or drawing, reading, in dance class, tae kwon do, piano, in front of the TV, eating sweets, etc… I was full. Beyond full. Maybe sometimes too full.
But when I speak of my childhood the first thing I think of is not the fullness of my fridge, because if one is never hungry, they tend not to remark upon being fed.
And now here I sit, tall and grown, and I break into prayer over my soup that’s never been a stranger to me.