1999It is the admission of weakness that has me here tonight. I can taste the night-time air at the back of my throat, forcing me to hurt my brain. I don’t want to breathe in this frigidity but I cannot live without it. So I inhale. And again the taste of failure, cold, biting, cruel enters my body, headed straight for my thought processing system that seems to have taken a day off today. Those many feet of seemingly swollen veins have declared a self-proclaimed holiday. And the rest of me rebels. Arms, stop shivering. They raise up from my sides, undulations emerging from their once steady swing. It is a dance that follows the rhythm of the clarinet and the lonely beat of the conga drum. The sounds of the wailing, thin reed instrument, piercing the air with the precision of a Haitian’s sharp wandering eyes, and the trippy taps of the conga, making me think of the speed of incoming storm clouds, induce my torso to join in the prayer of thanking life for music.
Here I am raising up from the ground, my feet finding steps in the air for which to ascend. Each step beckons to me, inviting me with “mmmm’s”, “rrrr’s”, “yes’s” “no’s”, “yes’s know your woes despite your clothes.” Each step reveals the colors I need to ingest to be whole. And as the music continues its Indian/African vibe, I collect my soul and step onto the first step. Charcoal, onyx, ebony, dark. “Here I am” it whispers. Who are you? “Let’s see….”
Warmth, like the kind felt from a man pressed against your backside after a long bought of heavy breathing, appears, soothing in its delicacy. I am in “a safe place?” Yes. My life comes from the woman I hear making strange noises. I breathe through her, eat through her. The sound that I often hear goes up and down like a see saw, curving and lilting in a singsong manner Often I bump around in here, when the one who wants me is making that noise. My home rumbles at times like those. I kind of like it. It can be really loud and it’s always joyful and I never want it to go away. Laughter.
I move away from that step, my past having taken up a nice chunk of the “on vacation” linguine in my head. Another step looks more recent, it has my symbol on it, painted in blood. I step onto it.
Determination tastes like oxygenated semen sometimes, thick and acidic. Other times it tastes like pineapple, also acidic yet juicy. Thin, I guess you’d say. This time determination is like the pineapple. I’ve found a razor blade from a Bic razor. It looks a little old, like feet that don’t get washed enough and accumulate skin and other natural products between the toes. Part of this razor looks this way, the rust hanging on like the crust between one’s toes, or the crust around sliced bread; sometimes it’s hard to get rid of it. My brother wraps the less appealing side of this otherwise perfectly healthy piece of shiny metal with a gray, iridescent piece of duct tape. Gray like the fake gray people go to the hairdresser’s for to cover up their otherwise dull gray like a ten year old scouring pan hair. He uses the match to sterilize the blade and I always like the split second smell of that head’s red hair catching on fire, giving me a disgustingly pleasant whiff of rotting eggs. It reminds me of the two-hour car ride to the beach when we pass by the sulfur pits: “Source Puante.”
He draws on my back with a pen. He tells me, “I’m gonna start cutting now.” Anticipation. Tastes like… the extra production of saliva right before you eat the piece of strawberry cheesecake you’ve been eyeing for the past minute. Then a stinging sensation, like a papercut, no, less painful because you expect it, like five mosquitoes biting you in the same precise spot at the same precise moment. Yes, that is what is felt. I can taste the iron of my blood spilling into the cotton balls I know he applies to my carved skin. I can imagine the cotton sucking up the bright redness like cattails suck up oil on ocean surfaces. And when it’s over, I run to the bathroom and turn my back to the mirror, craning my neck around, not exactly like a crane, but I try, and I see the circular gouged-out pieces of skin, filling up with rivulets of my personal liquid. I smile. This is my gift to myself.
I step off that step which has helped me somewhat in my quest to eradicate my weakness tonight. But still, there is a lingering wisp of it, twirling about my face, like the skinny piece of silk you run into, where you were not aware a spider lived. And often when there
is one small thread, you can run into many others. A web of weakness. This is the weakness felt when you’ve just had a head on collision with a taxi cab on a dark Haitian road that is framed by a mountain on one side, and a ravine on the other. It is the uncontrollable shaking that persists even two hours after the accident has happened, when you know you’re safe but you can’t believe how close you came to death. It is the weakness felt when a man in his forties, who is merely supposed to help you with your bad back (after all he is a doctor), takes you out for dinner, buying you drinks you didn’t ask for and touching your hand while telling you how pretty an eighteen year old you are. It is the weakness felt when you hear a man you thought you knew, scream profanities to you on the phone and you swear your heart has suddenly decided it’s been on a two-hour marathon and your brain has only just found out. It is the weakness felt when you know you should have listened to your gut feeling and instead you listened to your brain.
I take one last step. This one the many shades of brown that one encounters every day. Burnt ember, sienna, dark chocolate, marabou, cocoa. Here, I am all of you. I become that cinnamon breeze that wafts through your nose. I become the funk in your sweat. I become the nine year old blind dog that you still love so devotingly. I become the alarm clock you wake up to in the morning, and the crisp apple you bite into to soothe your parched throat. I become you and we become one. On this step, I understand you. And so being, I understand myself.
And so the weakness, once before felt, dissipates like mist so often does, with the strength of the heat of the sun. But that is only when the sun has risen. Right now, it is still dark.
Here I am raising up from the ground, my feet finding steps in the air for which to ascend. Each step beckons to me, inviting me with “mmmm’s”, “rrrr’s”, “yes’s” “no’s”, “yes’s know your woes despite your clothes.” Each step reveals the colors I need to ingest to be whole. And as the music continues its Indian/African vibe, I collect my soul and step onto the first step. Charcoal, onyx, ebony, dark. “Here I am” it whispers. Who are you? “Let’s see….”
Warmth, like the kind felt from a man pressed against your backside after a long bought of heavy breathing, appears, soothing in its delicacy. I am in “a safe place?” Yes. My life comes from the woman I hear making strange noises. I breathe through her, eat through her. The sound that I often hear goes up and down like a see saw, curving and lilting in a singsong manner Often I bump around in here, when the one who wants me is making that noise. My home rumbles at times like those. I kind of like it. It can be really loud and it’s always joyful and I never want it to go away. Laughter.
I move away from that step, my past having taken up a nice chunk of the “on vacation” linguine in my head. Another step looks more recent, it has my symbol on it, painted in blood. I step onto it.
Determination tastes like oxygenated semen sometimes, thick and acidic. Other times it tastes like pineapple, also acidic yet juicy. Thin, I guess you’d say. This time determination is like the pineapple. I’ve found a razor blade from a Bic razor. It looks a little old, like feet that don’t get washed enough and accumulate skin and other natural products between the toes. Part of this razor looks this way, the rust hanging on like the crust between one’s toes, or the crust around sliced bread; sometimes it’s hard to get rid of it. My brother wraps the less appealing side of this otherwise perfectly healthy piece of shiny metal with a gray, iridescent piece of duct tape. Gray like the fake gray people go to the hairdresser’s for to cover up their otherwise dull gray like a ten year old scouring pan hair. He uses the match to sterilize the blade and I always like the split second smell of that head’s red hair catching on fire, giving me a disgustingly pleasant whiff of rotting eggs. It reminds me of the two-hour car ride to the beach when we pass by the sulfur pits: “Source Puante.”
He draws on my back with a pen. He tells me, “I’m gonna start cutting now.” Anticipation. Tastes like… the extra production of saliva right before you eat the piece of strawberry cheesecake you’ve been eyeing for the past minute. Then a stinging sensation, like a papercut, no, less painful because you expect it, like five mosquitoes biting you in the same precise spot at the same precise moment. Yes, that is what is felt. I can taste the iron of my blood spilling into the cotton balls I know he applies to my carved skin. I can imagine the cotton sucking up the bright redness like cattails suck up oil on ocean surfaces. And when it’s over, I run to the bathroom and turn my back to the mirror, craning my neck around, not exactly like a crane, but I try, and I see the circular gouged-out pieces of skin, filling up with rivulets of my personal liquid. I smile. This is my gift to myself.
I step off that step which has helped me somewhat in my quest to eradicate my weakness tonight. But still, there is a lingering wisp of it, twirling about my face, like the skinny piece of silk you run into, where you were not aware a spider lived. And often when there
is one small thread, you can run into many others. A web of weakness. This is the weakness felt when you’ve just had a head on collision with a taxi cab on a dark Haitian road that is framed by a mountain on one side, and a ravine on the other. It is the uncontrollable shaking that persists even two hours after the accident has happened, when you know you’re safe but you can’t believe how close you came to death. It is the weakness felt when a man in his forties, who is merely supposed to help you with your bad back (after all he is a doctor), takes you out for dinner, buying you drinks you didn’t ask for and touching your hand while telling you how pretty an eighteen year old you are. It is the weakness felt when you hear a man you thought you knew, scream profanities to you on the phone and you swear your heart has suddenly decided it’s been on a two-hour marathon and your brain has only just found out. It is the weakness felt when you know you should have listened to your gut feeling and instead you listened to your brain.
I take one last step. This one the many shades of brown that one encounters every day. Burnt ember, sienna, dark chocolate, marabou, cocoa. Here, I am all of you. I become that cinnamon breeze that wafts through your nose. I become the funk in your sweat. I become the nine year old blind dog that you still love so devotingly. I become the alarm clock you wake up to in the morning, and the crisp apple you bite into to soothe your parched throat. I become you and we become one. On this step, I understand you. And so being, I understand myself.
And so the weakness, once before felt, dissipates like mist so often does, with the strength of the heat of the sun. But that is only when the sun has risen. Right now, it is still dark.
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