I Took Flea Bites

with me into the 8th grade.

There was an uprising every night,
teeny tiny terrorists jumping
up from the carpet where I slept.

—Or were they drawn? Were they in
love, irresistibly attracted
to my body, pulled up
in the beam of my warmth?

No one else was in love
with me that fall. I wore

old clothes,

walked in the classroom
like a hanger holding up
my dad’s red winter jacket
that he got by turning in
cigarette UPCs.

I carried fleas in each pocket.

But I was at peace with the fleas
and with Heather O’Dell
who kicked my backpack
across the science classroom.
I had just signed my name
with the peacemaking Jesus
and my pledge to turn
the other cheek was so fresh
that it cut the sting of each slap
right away and I offered
everybody gum—

Cotton Candy Bubblicious.

It was almost too sweet,
but irresistible,

like me.

1997

A Whole-Body Exercise

For 100 days of summer and 300 days of winter

I heaved a shovel. I was digging. I sweat and I froze

and my head throbbed. Pains ran down my legs like urine.

The same shovel on the same dry earth on every different day.

I’m out here with all the other thirsty workers getting paid what?

A dollar a day. One day, one dollar, enough to sharpen a shovel once a week.

On the 401st day the last blister on my palm broke open and ran clear.

Pain snapped down my arm, wounded hand refused the handle.

Feet enraged by endless dust kicked the useless shovel,

mouth twisted in mean disappointment, and a wail

swallowed in the belly. I fell, kneeling, to the earth.

Furious, uncontrolled, I scratched my way to

hope.

Small Hands

Such a small water in the big scope
of things. Just a pond,
but on its face it holds the whole
sky, alive with the changing
colors of the day.

My hands are small. I lean
low, hands as deep as I can
make them, cupped,
pressed tightly, but very little
water holds, little stays; the sky
leaves along the little rivulet wrinkles
of my palm, down and out.
One hundred thousand
handfuls are not even half
a pond.

My hands are small,
holding almost nothing in the end,
but at my touch the sky trembles
on every muddy shore.

a pond in Deerfield, Illinois

Passing

When I was preparing for childbirth the first time I did a fair bit of reflecting on pain. I read about it, journaled about it, and even practiced coping with it. (Did anyone do that thing where you hold an ice cube against your skin for 90 seconds as a pretend contraction?)

My reading said that fear of pain increases pain, and pain increases fear. We will get caught in a cycle of intensifying negative feelings unless we interrupt the feedback loop and confront the pain with the assurance that *we can handle it.*

As a birthing woman that meant something like “This labor cannot be too much for my body because this labor IS my body.” I was made for this. I can do this. I am strong. One contraction at a time. One breath. This too is passing.

Sensations—feelings—come and go. They are always packing up to go just as they arrive. They never last forever, nor usually for very long from moment to moment. (Even in the throes of grief our despair will be surprised and momentarily evaporate when we smell a honeysuckle flower along the sidewalk.) But our thoughts and stories about our feelings linger.

I have come to see that our fear of some feelings and pursuit of others is what rules much of our lives.

And I know exactly what I want: to slip into a sea of pleasantness and, in the non-striving motion of the jellyfish, evade unpleasantness and pain. But there is no such sea. I have to take the world as it is, the warmth of the fire with the pungent sting of smoke. I have to confront the pain with the assurance that *I can handle this*—not without help, but without despair. This too is passing. I still exist.