Whitened beauty

Here terrible stumps of whitened beauty splintered and cracked, until she lay down and looked up through the network of gray lichen and branches and slept a while.

This post is part of my book-long erasure poetry and collage project on Tove Jansson’s The Summer Book.

Balance

It tried to grow directly into the teeth of every storm, crouched and twisted, the balance between survival and extinction so delicate.

This post is part of my book-long erasure poetry and collage project on Tove Jansson’s The Summer Book.

Happy New Year

They said the door is always open on to the horizon.

This post is part of my book-long erasure poetry and collage project on Tove Jansson’s The Summer Book.

Glide (with eyes open)

You glide with eyes open, the weariness still afraid of deep water.

This post is about that feeling when you’re doing a little better, and you’re not sure how much you can handle, but you want to try. And you’re scared of overdoing it, making yourself worse again. This is about living with a constant fear, and blaming yourself when things go wrong, even though it is mostly out of your control. But you’re also hopeful and you want to enjoy every little gain to the fullest.

A big hole

A big hole, big enough for all of us, swayed back and forth with the movement of the sea.

Old teeth smacking disdainfully

White and pink, a whole mouthful of old teeth smacking disdainfully. They covered a bright hole.

In the introduction to The Summer Book, Kathryn Davis writes of an “island’s allure—that sense it gives you of being in the presence of something that has no need of you.” As someone who has been chronically ill for more than ten year, it struck me that this is how I feel, or have been made to feel, about society. As a chronically ill person it is hard not to end up in the margins. Looking in from the sidelines you feel ignored, left out, and even vilified and disbelieved.

I’m trying to express those experiences in my found lines of poetry and in the collages. But I also want to go beyond the negative and search for resilience and hope. I hope you’ll take this journey with me.