illness and desire
desire from others as tangential but more importantly, desire within the self
the divorce and separation of that when the body doens’t seem to function the way it was supposed to
desire in what way?
sexually? emotionally? hopes for your life? your future?
Allowances — for grief, for pain, for childbirth, for illness — have been so hard to come by, I think, because we discount the body. Worse, we hold it in contempt compared to the mind, a proxy for religious spirit, so that the reality and risk of cruelty and brutalization are minimized and ignored.
The Resilience Myth
Hand it to me.
Your wound and its colony, your pain, your disease.
Feed it to me,
like a bird, a cuckoo, a vulture, a bloodthirsty creature.
Give it no name,
that's all mine to do; I'll name it and get attached too.
Bring me your sins
i'll make an altar to your cancerous offerings, burn them with the candle.
I am your daughter, your doctor, your priest.
Y
I realise, suddenly, how this season of illness has rearranged my mind into a library of paranoia. I am afraid of being doubted, and I'm afraid of being found out. I am wondering what all those other people, whom I used to see every day, are thinking of me.
Are they gossiping, or has some morbid discretion fallen over my name? I'm not sure which is
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