I just keep wondering

how on earth you could be dead.

Depleted

I am angry at every tragedy.
I am incensed
at senseless death and violence.
I am fraught with fury
over false hopes
and political posturing
over dead men's heads.
I add up all the losses,
trace back every shed tear and
set of shoulders slumped
under the weight of
too much, too often,
and I find that I have overspent.
My grief has been depleted by
too many bad days and
too many bad men
and I have nothing left to give you now
besides this slow-burning fire.
You disappeared in a puff of smoke
like magic in reverse
and I cannot cry for you
so I smolder instead.

Skin

Sometimes
I'm driving down the road,
cars on either side of me
taking up too much space,
and suddenly a tightness grips me,
blooms in my chest and spreads
until I feel like my skin is five sizes too small.
Or maybe I feel like I don't have any skin at all,
because everything is raw
like no new skin ever grew --
no skin that knows how to miss you
and drive in straight lines, too.
It lasts long enough to make me wonder
if I should stay on the road,
but just when I'm about to pull off,
it recedes as quick as it came,
and I start to feel like I can trust my skin again,
and it gets me to my destination.
And then I start to think that maybe new skin
is growing in, after all,
because the air doesn't hurt so much anymore.
And I think that maybe I can do this,
maybe I can grow these scars,
maybe it's not as bad as everyone says,
and I let myself think about puppies
and periwinkle
and the square root of pi.
I let my mind wander in safe little circles
for whole minutes even,
but before I know it, the memory of a single eyelash
engulfs me and I can't breathe again.
And then I realize that there is no order to this,
there is no blueprint, no estimated time of arrival.
There is just me, on an endless road,
without my skin.

Abilities

I keep thinking about all of the things that I can do.

I can sing.
I can dance.
I can act.
I can write all different manner of things.
I can speak several languages.
I can speak in different accents.
I can perform for a large crowd without a twinge of fear.
I can make people laugh.
I can make people think.
I can motivate people.
I can encourage people.
I can help people.
I can do things many people only dream of, and yet I can't help dreaming of trading all of those abilities for just one: the ability to bring back the dead.

Addiction

I remember addiction.

I smoked my first cigarette when I was only eleven, and smoked it for real the first time when I was thirteen. I used to steal Marlboros from Bashas, or change from my mom's purse to buy them at the liquor store where my cleavage was my ID. I used to fight over the last cigarette, and pace nervously in desperate anticipation. I begged smokes off of strangers. I smoked strangers' butts out of ashtrays. Now that I think about this, the mystery of where I got my first cold sore is probably solved (but the mystery of how I don't have something far worse is not).

I remember quitting. J--- didn't smoke, and I was self-conscious about it. I knew I tasted like an ashtray and didn't want to kiss him with that mouth. So I decided to quit. Little did I know that the Welbutrin I had been prescribed for depression was a mega dose of the same stuff they gave people to quit smoking, and other than a few days of cravings and irritability, and a few almost-slips (like grabbing a cigarette from a friend right as J-- walked in the gate), quitting was pretty uneventful. I just quit.

But then I started again. Not quite like the last time I 'quit' for a few days when I ran out of cigarettes and decided not to buy any more. I had been off the nicotine for months. Then I randomly decided to smoke a cigarette on the way home from work, and suddenly I was smoking again. Then I got pregnant. So I quit again. Then I lost the baby, and the first thing I did after was smoke a cigarette (even though J-- thought he had talked me out of it). Basically, I was playing at quitting.

I don't really remember the last cigarette I smoked. I don't remember that moment of finality when I was clearly determined to be done with it all. I think it slowly settled in as my convictions slowly solidified; one day Jehovah was more important to me than smoking, and sex, and even J---. Of course, quitting J--- was harder to do. It took something bigger than willpower to finally be done with him. If I'm being honest, the decision being taken out of my hands is what had to happen for me to be done with him. I guess love is my drug of choice.

All these years later, cigarettes are still in my dreams. I dream that I am still a secret smoker, that I am living a lie, pretending to be smoke-free while harboring packs of cigarettes tucked into secret corners. I dream that people see me smoke but don't really understand what I'm doing. Maybe the cigarettes are a metaphor for other things (who really knows when it comes to dreams?), or maybe it is my addiction asserting itself deep in my subconscious. I just know that in my dreams, smoking is delicious, and I couldn't stop if you held a gun to my head.

My waking mind has a little more dominion. Or should I say, my waking mind remembers why I don't want to smoke. No, it's not for my health, although that would be a very good reason to abstain. And it's not the cost (I hear interpreters are well-paid, but that might just be a rumor). No, my waking mind remembers that I made a promise on February 26, 2000, and this is one part of that promise that is easy to keep. It is a simple matter of never looking back.

And yet, the dreams. And yet, when the right elements combine -- a smell, a sound, an emotion -- the craving comes on strong, like I never quit in the first place. I haven't smoked a cigarette in over 12 years, but I can still remember the taste, the feeling of relief as the nicotine hit my bloodstream. I forget for microseconds that I am not a smoker. But then my promise reminds me. I think it's not my promise so much as the One I promised that snaps me back to attention and keeps me away from that vile, deadly habit.

Cigarettes are not even my drug of choice. I don't have to explain what dreams I have of J---. I don't have to explain how I crave those feelings, how they sit in my mind every day like anxious puppies, tail-wagging for my attention as I try to distract myself with daily living. I have not found a suitable partner, and so I have to push those thoughts away, and those are the ones that take up the most space, so that nicotine doesn't have much of a stage to dance on.

If I have these thoughts about my addictions, and if I cannot conquer them by my own power, if the only reason that I am not living the life I lived before is because I gave that part of myself over as well as I could, to be managed by someone far more powerful than I, then it is no surprise to me that my brother had a moment of weakness. The surprise is that he did not have it sooner. I am humbled by my brother's strength of will.

"Goodnight, sweet brother. I will see you when you wake."