The Bay In Fistfuls Of Storm

My Others

The oil of bay carried itself like a queen on the fierce wet wind and I knew I was alone with it, hanging from a window catching fistfuls of storm and storing the rain up in my skin like a spirit sponge, the sharp oil clinging to the light of my mind like a clear voice and I knew I was alone with it. The whipping branches stole my voice as I tried to scream out for my sisters, my others, my brethren, my like...nothing coming out against that wild rushing of thick leaves in the dark. Except that I knew I was no different than the oil of bay, carried by the fierce wet wind beyond sound, beyond sight, to a place protected by invisible spectrums of care.

Sometimes I think that must have been the moment when I let loose my first airless primal scream, leaning out of my bedroom into the cold wet storm. The moment when I first knew I belonged more with the bay tree scratching at my windows that I did with the red plush carpet, the pink thin twin beds, and the dolls I pretended to be because it was less painful than admitting I was human and that my blood way type A and not an endless bottle of ketchup and would, in near years to come, flow more freely than my love. I inhaled that sharp bay scent like a dog devouring the thin evidence of prey on the air- deep into my lungs, still clean of smoke, and it was like drinking from a bridal cup; the scent of promise, pregnant with future portent.

I unfolded the promise slowly like a gift closed with a thousand strips of scotch tape and bundled in a deep nest of tissue papers and yet still enclosed in a baffling number of boxes getting ever smaller until there is nothing but a grain of sand in my palm and it is my present, my future, my death, my legacy, my eulogy, and my love all in this one tiny molecule of matter barely visible to the naked eye.

And this is my gift.

All the scotch tape, the deep tissue nests, the endless boxes within boxes: this is my mind and the minefield I must unwrap to reach my gift.

I keep trying to hand this grain to others, to say "take it", and give what small gift I have to them. And every time I give it away I have exactly the same grain of sand in my palm and I can't tell if it is being rejected or regenerated. I can't tell if it even matters.

I know I am different.

People keep saying to me "what is normal anyway?" and I have a response to that but I know it will frighten others because they genuinely don't understand how outside of their sphere of knowledge, their sphere of understanding another human being can fall. I come flying through the air at them, full speed, with my words and crush their certainty that "normal" is a myth and that no one is really "normal". I trap their smug words with semantics and I see the look finally cross their faces. The look of dawning realization, like lost innocence, like small horror.

I am a rider in the close velvety dark waving a flag of short light. I fill the air with my oil of bay and it finds my others who have been fighting with themselves in the old noise of human storms, waiting for their others too. I find them, I try to tell them that this sea of trouble, this acrid scent, sharp as a knife in the nose, fresh and astringent will cleanse them if they let it. I try to tell them that this tiny grain of sand in their hand is a gift, if they choose to use it so and will staunch the flow of their own blood.

I have spent more hours than any person should telling others that I am just like them. Except for the obsessive desire to be dead that has held onto my heels like an aggressive toddler in an endless tantrum because being dead is like a peaceful sleep and a rest from this infinitely uncomfortable business of living- although I eventually only chose to scrape and cut and rip at my own flesh, I am completely normal. If by "normal" one means: just like the average person. I am completely normal, I have explained, except for the hours I've spent twisting fabric around my fingers until they turn numb and calloused; except for the weeks of no sleep and the obsessive writing that I must do because I will die if I don't do it.

Yes. I 'm just like everyone else. It's true. Because we all find complete strangers in our own reflections and we all know when danger is close and bolt like wild animals keyed into the minute vibrations of earth and air when the slightest disturbance hits our flared nostrils. Is this you?

This is me. This is me. This is me.

But you won't see me as I really am because you will see yourself in me instead.

I am an infinite reflection of yourself.

Because I love. I love. I love.

My cloak of invisibility is my love, my goodwill, and my wish to protect others.

I will tell you who you really are. And you will hear me in your own voice and never know I was there with you in that brightest place in your mind; your point of origin. You will look right through me in my invisibility. I will visit you in your sleep and I will tell you why you need to live, to thrive, to love, to forgive, and to let go. It will come to you as a pungent scent like broken pine needles or bay in hot oil like your mother's soup, remembered in soft corners where is strikes an odd note, and bounces against the quiet, like living loud.