lycanthropia

still I wander around the house almost stamping half-angry picking up clumps of cat hair from corners opening and closing doors why can’t I concentrate make another cup of green tea too hot add ice cubes sweating pacing of course now I get a nosebleed every part of me has blood coming out of it lately I go outside and wander around the yard picking up random trash and trying to think “In fact, English as a discipline developed in tandem with the entry of women to colleges and universities, in many cases its study being restricted to women, or women to it” when we finish it looks like we butchered something in the bed all my best lines are stolen blood streaked across my thighs and stomach and all over our hands and arms at one in the morning I put the blue sheets in the washing machine the shushing sound is consoling Farren says DO NOT FALL IN LOVE and I do whatever Farren tells me because “While Palmer’s statistics are revealing, and prove that English was a women’s discipline for some time, most disciplinary historians omit women altogether from their accounts of the early years, or begin their histories once men have arrived” back upstairs and downstairs again the cat watching in amazement her amazing continually pacing mother finally at the kitchen sink break open a capsule of Effexor and count out nine tiny beads inside it put the capsule back together and swallow it what is it going to take for me to get my brain back my brain on which I have always been able to count when nothing else was working the bathroom trashcan full of bloody tissues take out the trash use a plastic grocery bag to pick up the half-decayed dead rat in the yard the usual bouquet of blue-green bottleflies the ghastly sweet smell “In short, while women helped to put English on the map by providing bodies to fill the classroom, they became an implicit liability when it came to demonstrating how hard the new subject was” and what about the transgression of these encrusted historical boundaries is this chakra-realigning or retraumatizing I genuinely don’t know only that when some actions suddenly happen over the course of it nothing seems particularly out of place at the time all is as much a part of it as other verbs how different is a slap or blow from a bite or yank or lick if nothing is special then was it ever special or was I just flat out wrong all those years does falling in love really even exist or did I pretend a long story singular only to my mind “The sorts of disciplinary paradigms mentioned above can also operate against women students; again, women are not seen themselves as ‘knowers’ when their discipline postulates them as that-which-is-to-be-known—mystery, hysteric, deviant” how in the world can I write any kind of normal essay pace the house pick up books put them down maybe grad school is another mistake there has to be a way to concentrate along a straight line there has to be a way to be an entire woman again instead of pieces of one there has got to be a way to get this done

She has always been prone to worrying about things she has said in classes or at parties, subtle social slights she might have made unintentionally, tossing restlessly in bed at night wondering how she can make up such offenses without adding more or worse to them. And now she has plenty of time alone at night to think about the years she spent having sex with her lover. She remembers many times when it would start with a massage, she would give him backrubs, digging her elbows into the really knotted spots the way he liked, then at some point him flipping over and then she would, for lack of a better phrase, service him, but it didn’t feel that way, it felt like a beautiful offering, like she was doing something sacred and exciting. And then too he would crawl up on the bed between her legs, peeling down her panties and nibbling at her inner thighs and flicking his tongue in that way that made her literally feel as though she might go insane, she might be losing her mind, she might not be able to stand it but then somehow there she was crying out hoarsely, hollering coarse and loud without shame, clutching at his head as he stayed there, his mouth firm on her, not going anywhere, I am not leaving you, her hips held securely in his strong hands. And now that she has the leisure to think about all this in her solitude, she wonders and worries about it in a way that did not seem possible at the time. She worries that the giving and receiving, the giving and taking of turns, was not as mutual as it should have been, not as mutual as she thought it was, perhaps did not feel mutual to him. But she never asked him, when they were together, it was an unspoken understanding between them that their lovemaking was deeply mutual (though they never called it that, they just called it simply having sex, it seemed less romantically fraught somehow, though now as with so many things she feels differently about that, she wishes that they had called it making love). So now, she worries, was their unspoken understanding really just her misunderstanding? Had he felt resentful, neglected, put upon? If someone (neither of them, but some unimaginable neutral observer) had been keeping count, who would have been ahead? Who would have been indebted to the other? Because the pleasures seemed so inextricable—hers was his, his became hers. She decides (again and again, in her solitude, putting the question to rest only to have it come up the next time she is tired and alone) that if he felt there were some inequity in the division of labor, in the reward system, he might have told her—he might have said something, he might have asked for more attention, rather than just leaving her to wonder about it alone. It never seems to occur to her in her worrying that in fact perhaps it was she who paid an excessive amount of attention to him.

“The man who has known pure joy, if only for a moment…is the only man for whom affliction is something devastating. At the same time he is the only man who has not deserved the punishment. But, after all, for him it is no punishment; it is God holding his hand and pressing rather hard. For, if he remains constant, what he will discover buried deep under the sound of his own lamentations is the pearl of the silence of God.” (Simone Weil)

Wake at ten and don’t get out of bed until two, paralytic. In the night, three in the morning, be awakened by overwhelming desire for the ex-lover, your craving for his breath, weight, scent, voice. Suffer astonished the visceral totalizing reifying memory of being locked with him tightly, both of you always a little surprised by it, that in middle age and after nearly five years you still had so much passion for each other. Feel it all over again, in a writhing, face in the pillow, frightening kind of intensity, thankless and grim. Having fallen so hard for him in such a lasting, domestic as well as cerebral, kind of way. Feel that permanence still ringing in your bones. That you were entrusted with beekeeping something sacred, and he has departed with such apparent willingness from it. And that you are left here alone, as Winterson said, on a rock hewn out of your own body, alone keeping the sacred fires. Write poems as tatted doilies that don’t soak up nearly enough blood, microscopes rather than telescopes to plumb a fathomless night sky. Go six months without so much as seeing him and then be awakened in the middle of the night almost able to taste his mouth he seems so near, and it is as if no time had passed at all, so sudden and uninterrupted as to make you laugh with astonishment. Distract, distract. Play Scrabble in a coffee shop, drink cinnamon plum tea, rosy and honeyed. Drink liquor only because now you can. Chat with friends, chat, chat. Take a cold shower and chair a twelve-step meeting in your black leather jacket, because you’re a rockstar. Laugh breathless at yourself, as in love as any schoolgirl. Light the pomegranate candle and look at his picture, which a friend has called sinister. Know that the circuit breaker of the body cannot be turned off no matter what the disaster, no matter how thorough his betrayals. Know that hugging a pillow can open the heart chakra from behind, through the shoulder blades, and induce sobbing when the chest feels wrung dry. Know that if he came through the door, even the cat would recognize him, would turn her belly upward for kisses. Know that he won’t come through the door, won’t call, won’t write, is gone. Feel the body opened, emptied and waiting, poised like a clear glass in the seconds before bright water could be poured in.