I can't sleep…
Quiet has many moods. When our sons are home, their energy is palpable. Even when they’re upstairs sleeping I can sense them, can feel the house filling with their presence, expanding like a sail billowed with air. I love the dawn stillness of a house full of sleepers, love knowing that within these walls our entire family is contained and safe, reunited, our stable four-sided shape resurrected.
~ Katrina Kenison, Magical Journey: An Apprenticeship in Contentment
Notes: Photo: Mennyfox55
Notes:
Although Twin is older by almost an hour—
of course the birth got complicated when it was my turn—
he doesn’t act older. He is years softer than I will ever be.
When we were little, I would come home
with bleeding knuckles and Mami would gasp
and shake me: “¡Muchacha, siempre peleando!
Why can’t you be a lady? Or like your brother?
He never fights. This is not God’s way.”
And Twin’s eyes would meet mine
across the room. I never told her
he didn’t fight because my hands
became fists for him. My hands learned
how to bleed when other kids
tried to make him into a wound.
My brother was birthed a soft whistle:
quiet, barely stirring the air, a gentle sound.
But I was born all the hurricane he needed
to lift—and drop—those that hurt him to the ground.
~ Elizabeth Acevedo, “More about Twin” in The Poet X (HarperTeen, March 6, 2018)
The Poet X, highly recommended.
Notes:
“On Sundays she got up early in order to have more time to do nothing.”
~ Clarice Lispector, from The Hour of the Star
Notes: Quote: via qui nasce una ruina. Art: Laura Lacambra Shubert with “Reading”
I’m sitting in his chair, a padded wheel chair at the side of his bed at the Rehab Center.
He’s sitting up on his bed, but bent over, trying to catch his breath.
Oxygen is flowing from a tank down a tube through his Trach.
My eyes are never far from his heart rate monitor.
It’s a lime green digital read out, being fed stats through a line connected to his index finger.
120.
122.
118.
123
A heart rate equal to a light jog.
Not a 10 min, or 15 min, or 30 min jog.
A 24 x 7 jog.
Running. Running. Running.
He coughs, interrupting the signal. The machine flashes yellow alerts, and fires a piercing alarm to the Nurse’s station.
Then silence. Continue reading “Running. With Bro.”