Breadcrumb #315

MEENA ROLDAN

There’s nothing sweet in revenge.
It’s boiling blood. Insatiable thirst.
An incapacitating desire to decapitate,
it’s tongue-tied. Its limbs are tangled.
There’s no easy way to untie the mind
of this knot. It’s self-inflicting and monotonous.
I replay the confrontation in loops in my head.
Devising elaborate boobytraps, extravagant
disembowelments with rusted tools,
and words to kill. I want to erase the
perpetrator for fear of erasing myself-
Want to shove the drugs down his throat
in return and watch him squirm under
the discomforting ecstasy then slip into
almost OD- Want to watch his skin turn green.
But there’s no pleasure in that. It’s survival
instinct. If you’re still alive inside, the animal
who attacked you turned you savage.
Call it disproportionate. Call me sadistic.
Question his motives, and judge if my reaction
is equal. Call me masochistic. Call me broken.
Call me disillusioned with my gory imagination.
I’m not saying it’s pretty. Just necessary to move on.

• • •

Breadcrumb #314

GABRIELLA Evergreen

“What do you notice?”

    Emily suddenly became aware of where she was. She realized with a flush of embarrassment that her mind had drifted off, again. Her eyes focused on the person in front of her – her therapist, Judith, who was looking at her expectantly. 

    “Ummm…” Emily avoided Judith’s gaze and looked at the wall behind her while she racked her brain for the correct response. It had only been a couple of weeks since she had started this new treatment, but she was pretty sure it was never going to work. 

    “I thought about my dad.” Emily said finally, after a long pause. She figured this was probably an adequate answer. After all, her dad was the reason she had started therapy, and he was the target of this treatment. 

    “What were you thinking about him?”

    Emily bit her lip. The truth was, she had been singing September by Earth, Wind and Fire in her head for the past 20 seconds. It had been playing on the radio in the waiting room, and now it was stuck on an irritating loop in her brain. 

    “I’m mad at him. For the ways he failed me as a parent. For the ways he hurt me.” This wasn’t a lie. It was easy to draw on those feelings. They were always lurking under the surface of her conscious mind, even if she was in a good mood. 

    “Okay, good. Go with that.” Judith held up two fingers in front of her and started moving her hand left, right, left, right.  Emily followed her fingers with her eyes. This was the part of the treatment Judith called “bilateral stimulation,” and was apparently supposed to trigger thoughts or memories, presumably about her father.   

    She wasn’t entirely sure what was she was supposed to be experiencing. Admittedly, when Judith had explained the procedure to her, she hadn’t paid that much attention. She trusted her therapist, and figured if she thought the treatment was a good idea, she was probably right. She was the professional, anyway. 

    Emily’s stomach clenched. Not from anxiety though, from hunger. She thought about what she had for lunch. It had been deeply unsatisfying – a bland veggie wrap from the deli across the street from her job. She thought about what she could make for dinner tonight. Pasta maybe? No, she had made pasta last night. Maybe she could get takeout on the way home. 

    “What do you notice?”

    Shit. This one seemed to be over much quicker than the one before it. Emily’s eyes flicked to the tapestry behind Judith. She had spent a lot of time looking at it during sessions. It was easier to talk about this when she was avoiding eye contact.

    “Um…I was thinking about this time, I was probably 7 or 8 years old. I couldn’t sleep, maybe I was having nightmares or something. I remember seeing the kitchen light from my bed and I called out….I’m – I’m not sure I’m doing this right.”

    “Remember, there’s no right or wrong answer. Imagine being on a train and looking out the window. You’re not trying to think of something specific, you’re just taking note of what you see passing by the window. Just observe without judgment. Think about it like that.”

    “...Okay.”

    “So you’re laying in bed, you can’t sleep. You called out for your parents?

    “Yeah. I knew they were awake, and I called them. But they didn’t answer. It made me so upset. I started to cry. It was so stupid…I don’t know why I was so upset. I just remember feeling really scared.”

    “Okay, that’s good. Keep thinking about that.” Judith held up her fingers and started moving them back and forth. 

    Emily wondered if Judith was frustrated with her. It must be aggravating to try to do this treatment with someone who couldn’t focus. Judith always appeared composed and patient, but Emily thought about what she did after her sessions were done. Did she secretly hate listening to Emily talk about her problems? Did she think she was exaggerating, whining about things that weren’t that serious? Emily was sure Judith had other clients who were dealing with far worse things than she was. 

    She had speculated about the other clients, especially the ones she saw in the waiting room before and after her sessions. The tall, androgynous person whose posture was always slumped over, who seemed soft-spoken and downcast whenever they left Judith’s office. Emily tried to avoid looking at them, but a couple times she thought she had caught them wiping their face. 

The clients after her session intrigued her even more – two women who always went into therapy together. Emily had speculated wildly about their lives. Were they sisters, processing some familial trauma? A couple, hashing out relationship issues? She wasn’t sure of their ages, they could even be a mother and daughter. She imagined their conversations to be intense and painful.

    “What do you notice?”

    The tapestry behind Judith was vaguely bucolic. It depicted two figures, maybe a woman and child, standing in front of a stone house. One of them held what looked like a large hoop. 
 “It was dark. I was scared, and I started crying. I remember…this is going to sound so crazy. I know this is going to sound crazy.”

    “Don’t make any judgments. Just explain the memory.” 

    “I started hearing voices. I know how that sounds…but I remember it so clearly. I could hear a voice in my head. It wasn’t a dream.”

    “Do you remember what the voice said?”

    “Yes. It was mocking me…making fun of me for crying. It was angry. I think it called me a cry baby. It started yelling at me, too.”

    Emily covered her face with her hands and rubbed her eyes. 

    “I’m sorry. I feel so stupid saying this.”

    “You don’t need to apologize. Just hold that memory in your mind. Keep going.”

    Judith started the repetitions again. It seemed like she was moving her hand faster, now. Was that part of it?

    Emily wondered if Judith had her own therapist. It must be exhausting, having to sit here every night, hour after hour, listening to people recount their traumas. She must need an outlet for that. Emily imagined Judith sitting on a couch like she was now, repeating the stories her clients told her to an older, sympathetic woman. Somehow, this amused Emily – the idea that there was this unending cycle of pain, processing, and healing, like a great ouroboros of emotional labor.

    Maybe Judith went home at night and vented to her wife about the things she’d had to hear at work. Emily imagined her walking through the front door to a house with lots of scented candles and hardwood floors with woven rugs on them. Judith’s wife would be waiting by the dinner table or on a loveseat, with two glasses of red wine, or maybe herbal tea. She would kiss Judith, and see the weariness in her eyes, and ask her about her day. Maybe they had a cat, or a child. Judith never talked about her personal life (aside from mentioning her wife once), and Emily never asked. That’s not what they were there for, after all. 

“Emily imagined Judith sitting on a couch like she was now, repeating the stories her clients told her to an older, sympathetic woman.”

    But Emily liked to imagine that Judith had a pleasant marriage. She had to, right? It was her job to help people be happier and have better relationships. She and her wife were probably fantastic communicators. They might get into arguments, but they’d always articulate exactly what they were feeling, and listen nonjudgmentally to why the other felt wronged, and find some way to compromise. They probably had sex all the time, and Emily imagined that it was passionate, but sweet and loving too. 

    “What do you notice?”  

    Emily let out a deep breath. Had she been holding it?  

    The hoop next to the child in the tapestry reminded Emily of when she had visited colonial Williamsburg and learned about hoop trundling, the game children would play with a wooden hoop and a stick. The figures in the tapestry didn’t look like they were playing, though. They were stationary and faceless.

    “…It was his voice, right? It was my father. I mean, not literally. But those were things he would say to me. My brain was just, like, repeating them. Playing a trick on me. Right?”
“That seems like it would make a lot of sense.” Judith nodded, ever the nonjudgmental receptacle. 

    “When I was younger I thought maybe I was losing it. I mean, when you say it out loud, ‘I was hearing voices,’ that sounds crazy. But I was just repeating the things he would say.”
“You’re probably right. You were young. But it’s common for trauma survivors to experience auditory verbal hallucinations.”

    They were both silent for a moment. The figures in the tapestry were silent, too. 

    “Let’s move on to a body scan,” Judith said. She had lowered her hand and scooted her chair back to its regular position. “You can close your eyes if you want to. Focus your attention at the top of your head. Move down through your body. Just notice what you feel without judgment – if you feel any tingling, tightness, discomfort, or any other sensations.”

    Emily closed her eyes. She never knew what she was supposed to feel during these body scans. She never felt much of anything, even after talking about something that made her really upset. The truth was, moments before she had been imagining her therapist making love to her wife, and she was kind of turned on, and pretty embarrassed, now. But she definitely was not about to say that. 

    “What do you notice?”

• • •

Breadcrumb #313

ELAHEH FARMAND

I remember summer skies from our rooftop in Tehran, the Alborz Mountains peaking above clouds until eventually, apartment complexes covered them up.  We spent most of our summers up there because it was the only place we were free.  We, the kids, played hopscotch and even took our bikes up there. In the evenings, we’d gather on the roof, sit cross-legged on blankets as my uncle cut a juicy watermelon and he would pass around half-moon-shaped pieces. We bit out of the fruit, wiping our mouths with the back of our hands.

    Sunsets were especially nostalgic and melancholy.  The day’s end always made me sad.  I wasn’t a grown up – I didn’t have to go to work and school was off so I don’t know why my heart was melancholy.  I can still remember the smell of the air in the evenings, with the residue of the day’s meals and maybe a neighbor’s smoke from the grill, and I can see the space we held together, as free as we could be, above ground and untouchable, close to the sun, close to the moon. We were safe in a small corner of our city Tehran, where only a faint sight of dreams hung around the cotton-candy-shaped clouds.  I’d watch the small alley below, the one I took to go to school; how small everything was from the rooftop.  I felt like I could dream of anything.  I wish I could remember what I wanted then, as a child. I think I wanted to fly.  I’d watch the birds in the sky, envious of their wings.  Where would we go from here?

“We were safe in a small corner of our city Tehran, where only a faint sight of dreams hung around the cotton-candy-shaped clouds.”

    I was 11 when we left Tehran for good. And a few years later, my mother went back to Tehran and sold the apartment.  My childhood ended then; there was no longer a home to go back to.  For years, I was burdened with the weight of immigration and assimilation.  I desperately searched for a home to belong to.  My thoughts and dreams and desires were drenched in nostalgia for that childhood, for that Iran.  I stopped smiling and I hardly laughed; my mother felt guilty and I betrayed.  I mourned and sadness became a part of my identity.  I started to think that all good things come to an end.  Little did I know how lucky I was to have escaped Iran’s prison.  Of course, with time, I learned more about the country that was once mine. I no longer mourn the past, but I recall the joy and naïveté, the bliss of childhood ignorance, the bittersweet memories.  Everything must come to an end.

• • •

Breadcrumb #312

MAURA CONLEY

I'm not exactly sure what happened first–either the wind swept through me or I swept through the wind, but who’s accounting for these things anyway when the sky forces you down so fast you can hardly breathe. For as swiftly as it slams through your face, pushes the air from your rib cage, tears it all from the pink flesh inside your lungs, it really is such a sweet act of desperation. Just object and atmosphere, together at last.

    My hair flew wildly behind me as, floor by floor, the luxury high rises applauded my way down down down. The wind: clapping. The balconies: clapping. The tiles, the thick gray windows, the errant pigeon: clapping, clapping, clapping. The smooth cement sideways and the slick mirrored glass of the buildings shimmered my path out before me. Right this way, they whispered, faster faster faster.

“My hair flew wildly behind me as, floor by floor, the luxury high rises applauded my way down down down.”

    I felt my past lives travel away and behind me the way a slug leaves tracks across a pathway, the iridescent mucus a physical mark of its journey and how it has moved from point a to point b. In circles and circuits, with a slight air of mischief, these physical echoes continue to spiral out from my body as I plummet. My past lives gathered together to perch precariously up on that ledge, an infinite number of my toes clenched tightly together, all wondering, in the beautiful and richly layered unison of a church choir should I, should I, should I? And finally the angelic, resounding, sublime, yes.

    And I know people will say of these past mes: I saw you so happy, with my own eyes, how could you do this to the people who loved you, you shouldn’t have, that day, that way, that high. But these lives were as far away from me then as they are now, stories above and hovering in complacency, no returning to or getting back to, no. They were never me, just iterations of me that other people could grab a hold of, feel softly under their fingers, roll through their palms like a smooth and comfortable marble. But always askew, not quite right, a bunch of fakes. Never ever me.

    No one will lose much sleep over me. They are forgetting me even as they begin to ask why. It will be my son they lament, him never completing an entire rotation around the sun. They will cry and throw their bodies on his grave, begging his small body to forgive me, to see past what I’ve done. They will name future children after him. They will knit blankets in his honor and take to bed for days to cry his tears. They will tattoo images of his face across their backs and grow gardens in his likeness. The will feel hungry for him, for the loss of him, for all that he never did.

    But what they won’t know is that there is a version of me that doesn’t jump, that only holds this baby tightly in it’s arms miles above a dark city. In the deep shadows, he smiles up at me, feeling the breeze of the city’s wind zip like a feather up his cheek. What they won’t know is that there is a version of me that stands there unafraid even as it teeters moments away from the final descent. What they won’t know is that we fell so easy from that rooftop, ready to float like Icarus away from the sun. My weakness an honor to ride across that sky for even the briefest moment.

• • •

Breadcrumb #311

JULIA EDWARDS

My body is an inlet
    in a ripple
I tie up    my shadow  
to the nearest   docked neighbor 

On a bright day
I’m a droplet   gone rogue
     refracting a child   in yellow boots
picking up a shell
    helloing   without echo 

   I help myself   
to the laws of physics
   I help you
walk the dog, unpack boxes
wearing    a raincoat inside, I wade

While the world moves around
  in my  apartment   
I am America’s greatest
whirlpool in the light spot
Kibble glistens   from the rug 

The heaviness of the sun
will crush us but love
is still      the boy
on the burning deck
     trying to recite   "The boy stood
on the burning deck"
         You know the one

I borrow a line
of salt   blown out through  the nose
      of a bigger whale
This is what I mean by landscape
A sea monster I can't pronounce
rolling up at the edges   with references
    I don't know   anything about
that footnote / the epic / your
ghosts / those sirens

but I hear them
from the street   running
with expiring meat
while I tread the Mediterranean
    a foreign couple
on a poop emoji   passes by
holding hands   through the current
I want to make someone cry

The world is ending & I'm nearsighted
  I throw an iris
perpendicular   to the end
of the earth’s rotation
  It throws back
a wet rope / some kids
  eating sandwiches /
a watering can / 
broken vanity  mirror floats

The night zips up its jeans &
   hello, I am    your born again water
     unresponsive   to the tide
when the moon calls

• • •