STEPHANIE HEIT
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Join the world of 24/7 laundromats and grocery stores. Mingle with nocturnal red eyed beings. Walk Stadium Avenue at 3 am. Dull streetlights some kind of green initiative. They don’t light up shit. Fidget look over both shoulders feel underdressed. You want a sweater maybe a cap incognito in wee hour status. Enter Kroger because the fluorescent lights calm you. Neatly stacked rows of kleenex. Ice cream tubs in freezer section. Fresh bread technically day old past midnight. Watch the sun’s absence, feel it on the other side of the planet making way towards you like turning to try to see your back in the mirror. Gravitate to the empty aisles. Yellow triscuit boxes, texture of plastic chip bags, glint of glass sauce bottles. You don’t know what to get. Why you entered the store in the first place. Why the spaces are getting smaller and the 20 somethings yelling from aisle 9 she wanted sour cream and onion not ranch cause you to sweat. You need to leave the store. But the night, the walk home, your bed, your inability to sleep, your inability to breathe. Body panting. Clenched hands. Loose as a goose try to relax. Eyes blur. Shut. You slowly realize the guttural sobs are coming from you. Stray thread pulls. Unravels. Hem undone. Don’t know. How to. Make it. Stop. There isn’t room for everything in your body.
Tired of listening to their stories. Your story. Having people say they understand. The 356 suggestions this week alone from well-meaning-do-gooders. You get on a soapbox with an old school dark blue megaphone and projectile lecture: raw food, chelation therapy, kundalini mantras, rescue remedy, haircut, buy a dress, half smile, gratitude journal, article on jogging as best medicine for treatment resistant depression, emotional freedom techniques, gluten free diet, Jesus, Buddha, Mother Earth, Hitachi 250R, Freudian analysis, Jungian analysis, jatamansi oil, biomagnetismo, 5HTP…+336 other suggestions are not going to save them. But what has happened to you won’t happen to them because they will:
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ELECTRICAL WORK
Donkey, cat and horse. Backward by seven’s. List of words: key diary railroad yellow lipstick. Connect the numbers. Draw a triangle. Recite: key diary railroad yellow lipstick. Change into the gown. Remove jewelry, your watch. Hand these to your dad for safe-keeping. Get on the bed. Down the elevator to the Post Anesthesia Care Unit. IV. Wait your turn. Beeping machines. Cramped room. How was breakfast? Anesthesiologist humor. Recite name and birthdate. Toredol, flumazenil, propofol, succinylcholine. See the whooshing sound behind your eyes. You don’t dream. You don’t remember the seizure. Some part of you wakes up in recovery to answer orientation questions. Upstairs you don’t know what time it is or the location of your watch. Dress and wheelchair it to the cafeteria for lunch. Sleep the 4 hour drive home. Dinner. Sleep 14 hour night. Repeat 3x/week then 2 then 1 then every other week then repeat and reset. You fall in love with the anesthesia. Ask the doctors to add a little more off the record.
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