pandora picks aaliyah

this song

takes me back

to what seems now like youth into saturn return

and you

and that crappy old car radio with the broken cassette

and all that washboard

and all that open space

and all that dust kicking up into our skin

into that tiny mountain cabin

candles burning hot we would fuck like the earth was opening

then primp for the bar in the flickering light

while the radio crackled and hissed

pop songs

drove steep dirt roads in the night

you kept a baseball bat behind your seat

you held my hips while i danced

this song takes me back

to need heavy

old as the hills butch femme

lust

damage

and revenge

and that old truck that broke your arm

you kept a rag stuffed into the hole where the gas cap shoulda been

you had to the hit the starter with a metal pipe to get it to turn over

i loved watching you pop the hood climb in there and beat that engine

made me wanna turn you over take you back

you pulled femme shine from my stone

like brilliant cholla flowers from santa fe sun

like prayer under my breath

i still ask

for your forgiveness

for my own anger made my breaking drove

our screeching

what i’ve learned from us

how i’ve changed

how together we were fumes and flame

combustion

but also climbed into the woods and sat

in wild silence

watched spiders spin webs

laughed at bird song

but you

like aaliyah

are gone now

just memories and spirit

kicking up like dust once

in while when music takes me unawares

turns me over

takes me back

like saturn returning

to you.

haunt.

During a recent unwell stint, stuck in bed, i watched way too much of a show called Being Human (uk!). i’ve been thinking about the character annie, who was a ghost. she was bound, more or less, to the house she died in and her situation rang so true for me and my quiet life. the way that sometimes, if the circumstances were just right, she could be seen by the living. sometimes only by mediums and always by super naturals like vampires and werewolves. I liken this to how occasionally if i’m well enough and the circumstances are just right I can be in the world. move through the public like a normal person.
be seen.
spoken to.
touched.
how more often than not the people i can spend time with, because they are accessible, are other crips.
the supernatural. they are the ones that get it. they understand difference and isolation.

while i’ve been dealing with ei/chronic illness and access for over a decade and a half now, i’ve felt more and more like a ghost in this last year. I've been so unwell, especially since the house flooded last winter. The city, my house and my neighbors have all become too much for me. people know i’m around but never see me. or see me briefly. My crip lover that i live with plays the medium, he always sees me and is often the conduit to the rest of the world.

annie struggled with having a purpose in the world. feeling useful. she made endless cups of tea that she couldn’t drink. when she could be seen by humans she relished in the experience.
in being kind and helpful.  in laughter.
but mostly she rattled around the house she died in. waiting. scheming ways to connect.
sometimes succumbing to the non-life she was living.
just staring out windows.
waiting.

but thing is, i’m not a ghost. haven’t died yet.
not.
dead.
yet.
and believe me i know dead people. i know their ether. their reach.
and ghosts. ghosts are roaming haunting loss.
i want to be more than this. more than loss draped in a good laugh with a keen eye for tricks of light.
i want to feel -here-.
for ghosts there is no recovery.
my blood is moving and recovery is mine to embrace.
i've got shit to say and things to learn. people to touch and love.
supernaturally alive and spitting.

so here's to access eh?
and risk.
to remembering that the struggle to connect is precisely life.
i know this.