6 January 2020

I dreamt my brother was alive. It seemed to me that I had to protect him from unhappy things, or he would kill himself, and this thought came to me after I found a stack of rifled-through old math tests of our other brother, and I thought the younger would be unfavorably comparing himself (though he was the one with better scores in life). At a table set outside in the dark, our other brother told the younger his fish was gone, my hope fell, I had been hiding this knowledge from him in the years he was away, but then the fish came back, a blue-green thing called Bubbles, as large as a Saint Bernard, that looked like a sea monster from an old map, and it could move around out of water, and was flopping and flapping with happiness at seeing my brother, I felt relief, he might not kill himself over this.

 

And I had a stupid, unhappy dream about the damn TV show The Office, I was Pam and had gotten involved in a relationship with Michael Scott, which was being repeated, looping back on itself, hints of Groundhog Day but with less clear endings, I suppose like reruns of the same episode but the plot isn't always the same and there's lingering memory of past runs. I had been joking at first, and the thing usually ended with me breaking his heart once he caught wind, or sometimes I was gentler and gave him reason why he could feel disappointed with me and end it himself with some dignity, but then came a time I decided to keep him, because he was sweet and he was someone, and I felt I was committing a wrongness against fate but I had this deep unnatural almost-Biblical cleaving-to feeling of wanting to just hold him, we were in a taxi and I held him after playing the situation with the right words that would mean he would love me, I had my cheek to his shoulder and he whispered, in a very Michael Scott way, gentle coaxing, absurd, do you think we should end this, or something like that, and I thought, no, no, this is the time when he loves me and I keep him, but he ended it even with me saying the right things, offering him what he wants, he ended it and I sobbed, I was in a Kmart sobbing, I crawled on the floor weeping.

 

I woke up this morning with snow in the air and saw a crow take wing from the brick wall outside my window. I’ve got a bit of a cold that won’t let go, so it’s more Emergen-C, Ban Lan Gen tea, chicken soup, and truckloads of water. I need to call my surgeon with a question, but oh, how I dread the telephone. I’m trying not to be afraid of the month of January and what’s in it, and what may come after it, I am trying to be easy on myself and my fate.

Liver

I woke around 4 AM and wrote:

I'll be your Prometheus and sin against the gods and feed you my liver every day, I'm a woman and a glutton for punishment and I like to be generous, I'll give what I'm not supposed to give and you'll take what you're not supposed to take and this will be the expression of my love, I like being the thing you taste and I like growing organs back from dreams, I like the distant glint of men's fires as you tear me open, I like the stone beneath me and the sky above me and the pain within me and I was made to be punished, my body trumps love and my pain trumps fire and the eagle comes at dawn, I envy the eagle its appetite and I envy men their need, I need nothing and I hunger for nothing and I was made for giving, I'll be a woman and I'll be made for giving and take my joy in the stone I'm chained to, growing an organ hurts more than yielding it, the liver carries its own knowledge, you're warm as fire in me and so's my blood, my blood cooling on stone is the expression of my love, you'll never taste these other organs though I try to give them, so much is left intact as you fly away, every night I am left to my dreams.