Shame

Dear Mike,

The walls are watching
And have taken note
Of the lurking absurdity since you’ve been gone
Cracks are peeping in
On my cross-dressing roommate painting his toenails
In the room that used to be your office
He’s moved his adolescent internet girlfriend in
And insists that he really doesn’t like clothes
She’s pondering on the back porch
Burning bugs
Because he wants her to be thin like me
My just-out-of-prison boyfriend
Expounds in the living room
On self glorified escapades
With three women slaves
He thinks I’m willful
Insists that I put your pictures away
And that the naked roommate has to go
Mom calls
Johnny Malonny has started a family feud
The enemy family has jacked with her hot water heater
And she can’t get it relit
By the way, what time is it?
For the forth time today…
Insists that she’s my daughter
And that she’s been here before
She’s worried that I’ve become a lesbian
I pour myself another drink and swear I can hear
The foundation’s manic moan
And the support beam’s crazed creak
Tell a bizarre tale
Through cracks in the walls of the once stable home
We shared
How did things get so weird?

I made this picture over a year ago for Illustration Friday, and decided today that it needed a poem to go with it. The eyes are actually the eyes of the roommate and boyfriend mentioned in the poem. The poem is about a time period from '05 to '06 when my health took a turn for the worse. I ran into the boyfriend at the grocery store not too long ago. His demeanor had changed. He seemed more humble [I'm using that term loosely]. After talking with him for a while, he mentioned that he was going to AA. Ah, that explained it. Really though, I was so happy to hear that. In fact, I was surprised at how happy it made me, because when I first saw him, I was trying to hide, hoping he wouldn't see me. I could see that he sincerely wanted to make amends. He apologized for the way he treated me, and I forgave him. I hope he stays with it. As far as the cross-dressing roommate and his pyromaniac girlfriend, they broke up, and he still owes me $500. Glad that chapter's over.

Broken Eggs and Sinking Raft

This all ends up WASTING so much time because nothing WORKS RIGHT! I am getting very frustrated and upset.




The Broken Eggs


I am at Florence Morrison's house for a class she is teaching and she is frying eggs for us--we have to get them from the fridge and bring them to her and she tosses them into the pan--to speed things up. When I go to get mine, the fridge is full of broken brown eggs, and stacks of shells. Everyone else finds eggs, but I find only shells and broken eggs. Florence tells me broken eggs are still good and I say, "remember how I used to have chickens bag then, I know about broken eggs," but I still can't find any that are edible. She tells me I need to hurry and I crawl inside the refrigerator in order to see better. Now, even the cracked ones are gone.

I wake up with images of cracked and broken eggs haunting me. (Broken dreams?)
I feel somehow sad and left out.
I honored the dream by writing that poem, and I ask for dreams of clarification.

I am grateful for

• enough sleep to dream.
• a husband who seems to really love me, in spite of the wretched poem I just wrote about him
• a husband who is handsome and sexy
• the fact that I lost some weight! YAY!
  
  OK, here's the poem I wrote based in part upon the dream:
  
  
  
  The Sinking Raft
  
  Slowly, my husband unloves me. He stops
  putting the clean laundry in the drawers, then stops
  fluffing and folding it. Brings it up and dumps it
  in a tangle. Stops greasing my feet, rubbing my back,
  making love to me. "I will do everything,"
  he said, when he was courting. I dream of Florence,
  wife of John, my botany professor. More than forty
  years ago, John tried to get me into bed. I refused,
  despite his gifts and constant attention, but Katra caved
  and fell that long dark fall where you know you'll die
  when you hit bottom, and she wasn't dreaming.
  Katra didn't die, she became a lesbian, after John.
  Who could blame her? And Florence had an unfaithful
  
  husband. I hated John for that. "I'll do everything,"
  my husband said. "You can't," I countered.
  He tried, but couldn't. Of course
  he couldn't. No one could. I can't
  do anything. I rarely sleep, stare, zombie-like
  at the increasing chaos I can't control
  with my exhausted brain and body.
  But each time he stops, I see him turning away,
  turning his face to the wall, inching toward the farthest
  edge of the bed, away from me. He does that, too.
  Leaves me in sleep. I leave him, too,
  get up and pace the dark for hours, too tired
  to be useful. I finally sleep and go
  
  somewhere he's never been, without him.
  When I dream of Florence, her refrigerator is full
  of broken eggs. She fries eggs for all the women
  her husband courts, and everyone gets eggs
  but me. But why go back now, forty years later?
  Menopause? Dashed hopes, broken dreams?
  Is, like John, my husband unfaithful? "Remember
  when you used to love me?" I ask my husband.
  He tries the same on me. "See how it hurts?"
  He clings to me in bed, before he turns away,
  clings as to a life-raft in a stormy sea.
  I cling to him. We're not unfaithful, only old
  and getting daily older.
  
  
  Mary Taitt
  081205-1026-1c; 081205-0945 1st
  
  I'm always making BB sound like a jerk. Actually, I'm the one that's a jerk, probably.
  
  I had a terrible night last night. Did not get to sleep until well after 3:30 AM. When I don't sleep well, everything looks bad to me.