How to Love a Wolf: Push, December 4, 2020

How to Love a Wolf: Push

***Trigger warning: reference to sexual violence***

If you have ever unsuccessfully* pushed someone off of your body, pushed someone away, shoved someone like the Incredible Hulk into a wall that breaks on contact, you know that that push will forever, or until someday that feels like forever, course in your muscles—fascia, bones, connective tissue, cartilage—like a low-key electrical shock. You will, in essence, always and never be pushing. You will always be pushing and never push away. The concept of "away" as in "pushing away" will become equal to the ball of twine that will never be untangled, that is pushed to the back of the junk drawer and moved with you, inexplicably, from apartment to apartment, townhome, house, condominium. You will check and affirm in your mind where the twine is hidden in a million tiny moments undetectable by those around you. The twine will become indistinguishable from all those body "parts" I just mentioned. You will become the twine. You are the twine.

Sometimes, when poetry skips a groove in the wax of your life's record, the twine will feel like a bundle of sticks, good dry kindling, as they say, that may erupt into crackly dangerous flames if a match strikes and falls on it unintentionally.

—

How? How do I tell this story that is every strand of my body, every strand of this tangle, and a tumbleweed of good kindling? There is no start, no tucked end of thread that a careful squint or good readers make visible.

—

But this is not a ghost town. I am not a ghost town. Not yet. My ribs tighten as I feel myself, now, remarkably, as the sheriff, walking, gait slow, sustained, and humble (yes, humble) down the dusty shitty yellowbrown road of this godforsaken place. I feel the gun in my holster and a resolve set into my jaw. [I still feel it now.] I feel my legs grow longer, extending from the thickness bestowed on my flesh by my Black Irish blood to the tautness of my longer sheriff-legs. My arms bind as I type. The tips of my scapula drop into my back like wings about to unfurl; dangerous and too large for this space. I see them as if in a superhero comic.

I am unconcerned with my metaphoric alchemy. My messiness. My clumsiness with categories. A part of me is howling in rejection of categories. [I look up and see the reflection of a table lamp in a picture frame straight across the room from me. I don't see myself, but I see myself. Do you know what I mean? Do you?]

I sip the wine from the goblet next to me. It's the only goblet from the cupboard. It's from Ikea. The wine moves a tiny, tiny bit like mold atop old soup in Tupperware in the fridge. I shift my gaze like the sheriff might, a tiny barely discernible shift, to the pile of books on this table. I read "Mary Oliver: A Thousand Mornings," "Zen as Fuck," "The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson," and then I tip my chin to see Harville Hendricks (remember him?) "The Big Leap" and under that two more Mary Olivers. Uhhghh. I let out a sigh that sounds like a growl. Ahghhh. Another one. The sigh-growls come unbidden; I can feel my mouth open more than it might in a moment of deeper, self-conscious composure.

Which spines have been cracked?

The books, I mean: which spines have been cracked? I'm a terrible reader.

My cat Zemmi appears from nowhere and screams at me, a welcome bellow, and I say "hiiiiii Go-gi" in the same tone. I have never greeted her without delight. She meows now, a proper meow, then louder. She wants my attention, I think, though I've given it all day, joyfully. She wants to get to the next thing in this day, I think. A bath (for me, so she can contemplate stepping in yet never wet more than the tip tip tip of her paw). Bed and Netflix, where she's assured the front row, red carpet treatment.

She's gone now. Maybe she just wanted to say "hey." I feel saved, for a moment.

Which spines have been cracked? Which spines have been cracked?

I called the chiropractor today and scheduled an appointment. I said please get me in as soon as you can. My hip hurts.

It's been five years since I was laying on the floor of the Chicago Cultural Center, waiting for Jeff to battle the Evanston-Lake Shore traffic, and felt the pattern. Like knitting: like a knitting pattern to make a sweater that is so well-known, so well practiced, and, in fact, so protective.

I push on my right foot into the floor, my right leg bent, my left leg long on the floor. I see the ceiling, a blend of sound proofing and hanging lights. A thousand times. A thousand times I've done this movement, taught this movement, learned this movement in my extensive (I'm not bragging, it's extensive) somatic trainings, time, and attention. Oh god, I think, oh, no, this is it. My breathing must have changed. I don't know anymore. I push my right foot into the floor and my pelvis up and over, as if to get away, as if to start the Hulkish thrusting of the body into the air, crashing through the wall into the next room.

Suddenly I am Bruce Banner, walking down an abandoned train track. Suddenly I am 17 year old me. 18 year old me. I am counting 600 calories and razor thin slices of Colby cheese.

I get up. First, I roll over, and then I crawl toward my backpack and pull out a small jar of Tiger Balm. The mottled grey and black Cultural Center floor receives my slides; the dust moves into the crevices of my Target pajama pants that I wear when I dance.

And part of me is paralyzed. Starting now.

Uhhhghhh, ughhh. I make more sounds. I see the wine jiggle in the greenish bottle to my left and turn my head into the room, waiting for Zemmi's next howl.

And that's where this story starts.

*never successfully