Writing when I am in pain feels painful and is the opposite of what I want and am able to do. When I am in pain I find it impossible to take hold of the pen. My grip is poor. When I am in pain I can’t stand to be aware of my hands. They hang about my face, as if my face were a tree they want to roost in. Writing involves touching, and extending, and when I am in pain I don’t want to touch or extend; I don’t have it in me because I am in pain and therefore I am clenched rigid. Scared stiff. I am afraid that if I move a vital part of me will fall clean off. One of my breasts. Both clavicles. All of the slippery organs inside the bracketed region of my pelvis. I am afraid of the gaping hole, the hollow feeling, the excruciating sensitivity all around the rim, the air so uncommonly benevolent, the all-seeing eyes of daylight, the internal descent, the wincing gums, the slipping, the slops, the changing tune. I keep everything close and barely breathe. It hurts to breathe, each inhalation swerves in much too close. What is this invasive and accusatory intake searching for? It hurtles through me, raiding every duct and sac and filament and antechamber. With each exhalation I experience some mutual indifference, or perhaps merely a moment when all is suspended, simply biding its time, girding its loins. It cannot last, of course not—life goes on, and there is the breath again. Hurting again because again it rubs against a serried longing: the desire for life not to go on. To kindly cease for now. Yet on it goes because on I go, letting in these thrusts of air that rub me up the wrong way, that rub me raw and rawer.
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