alice waxes miscellaneously

What Child Is This

by Alice

I need shelter. . .

. . . Let me in.

fire

I need shelter and you have locked me out too long.

I need shelter and you pretend that I prefer to be homeless. I need shelter and you act as though I will dissolve if you simply ignore me.

If you determinedly ignore me.

You ignore me as the trap ignores the mouse, as the hook ignores the fish, as the bait ignores the prey. You ignore me as though I am not part of you, warp and weft; as though keeping me out of your home will render you as complete as you dream you are complete. Complete and solid and rid of me, as though I were not already—always—made out of you and you, out of me.

I need shelter.

Let me in.

I first came from inside, did you not know? But now I seek warmth and you lock me in the cellar. I seek comfort and you cage me in the yard. I am ready to come fully home and still you deny me. To my face, you deny me. You deny the very sound of my knock at the door, even as you open it to ask, “Who is there?”

Continue reading “What Child Is This” →

Tree Frog

by Alice

A rape survivor’s moderately non-literal response
to a country’s monumentally unthinkable decision.

[And yeah, GOP Senators: I’m looking at you.]

* * * *

I would believe myself one of the Stoics, born again, if I could.

I would convince us both, if only I could believe, that the fire I have undergone tempered me like steel, rather than reduced me to bone chips and fragments of teeth. The debris of a mortuary’s kiln.

Red-eyed_Tree_Frog

Understand: I have long since abdicated belief in humanity’s innate goodness. Our impulses may tend always to sociability, to companions and to tribe. But—friends, a family, a troop of bullies, a rape gang, an army, a Senate… In the end, how is difference measured?

We learn to live with our hungers—to make peace with them—or we never learn to live. The trick is how to soften into one’s fear, whether of connection or abandonment. To sink, to collapse gently, yet still stand tall. I settle myself in the chair and reach for vulnerability. Try to let myself go, to let myself turn soft.

Soft like a paunch, my anger whispers back. Soft and bloated like a liver gone rotten with cirrhosis.

Even after transforming, the butterfly will fear what once made the caterpillar sick.

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do rape survivors dream of electric grad school?

by Alice

 

~a reading list I could have really used, back as a doctoral student~

electric grad school

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Constellation of Negative Life Outcomes Tied to Chronically-Misdiagnosed PTSD; Or: Why Write a Memoir When You Can Just Print Your Name on the Front of the DSM-5

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Pathological Overmodulation of Traumatic Memories, Associated Emotions, and Bodily Experiences in the Dissociative PTSD Patient: “I May Be Pathological, But Hey! At Least I’m Not Crazy” (a lit review)

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Schehera-who-now? 1,001 Nights of Managing a Narcissist’s Feelings in Order to Protect Your Own

Continue reading “do rape survivors dream of electric grad school?” →

Now turns the fallow earth in grief and also light.

by Alice

I am in the shower tonight.

For over an hour.

Again.

Seems I cannot shower enough during these dark, chilling days of autumn. For reasons I still find curious.

What reasons, you ask.

I could tell you. I could say that I like the heat and how the wet steam rises, or that I am washing off the stench of each day’s ever more rancid news, or that I have a new-found dedication to feminine conventions and shave my legs now twice daily, maybe my pubes too. In fact, I like these answers. I think I will tell you one of them. Or you just pick yourself a favorite, and pretend it’s what I said.

Pretend I did not tell you the truth: that I am still learning what it means to feel, in all the senses of the word and of the senses, and it is only when hot water hits me everywhere and all at once that I can remember the names of human emotion.

Most of the time I spend standing in the shower I am crying. Don’t read too much into that, though.

Showers are a liminal space, is all.

sleeper-near-the-shutters-1936.jpg!Large (2)

Continue reading “Now turns the fallow earth in grief and also light.” →

when a body loves a body

by Alice

There were protesters outside the local Planned Parenthood clinic again this week. And, also again, a group of women in bright pink escort vests arrayed quietly along the front of the building, a buffer to the hate and madness.


These protests have ebbed and waned over the 15-some years I have lived in Philly, but they are clearly on the rise again. When I first moved here from Texas, I remember being shocked to see Planned Parenthood locations advertising on local TV, out in the open and unafraid. It expanded my vision of what became possible when we who believe in equal bodily rights and the full social participation of women were not forced to accept shaming and violence as “normal” responses to our stance. As mere “business as usual.”

On Wednesday​, as I do every time, I crossed the street to thank the escorts for being there. We shook hands and chatted​ for a moment, as I told them how glad I was to see them and how much their service means to us in the community. (We ignored​ the row of dusty old men standing behind me, muttering imprecations related to dead babies and our clearly-frozen souls.) Since this was a weekday morning, the women were all older—retired, or of an age to be so.

A phalanx of grandmas, holding the line.

Window across the street from the clinic.