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In This Scary Place. {poetry}

{Toni Frissel, 1947 / via historyinphotos.blogspot.com}

{Toni Frissel, 1947 / via historyinphotos.blogspot.com}

By Tasha Raella Chemel.

I’m afraid I’m going to succumb to the scary place
where you are trying to take me.
Or perhaps I’m dragging myself there, out of tired desperation.

You promised me clarity in this new place,
but it’s too quiet, and there’s no light,
and my fear of the dark hasn’t been stolen yet.

The climate here is damp and cold.
My denial withers. My spells forget themselves.
You are right. I am not fooling anyone, in this scary place.

My eyes no longer hear the chatter of shadow,
and declensions of countless ocular languages I may never speak,
but I miss the spiced warmth of their banter.

In this scary place, I no longer tangle with chair legs,
haplessly cornered like an animal,
because I have learned to treat my mental maps like old photographs.

In this scary place, my cane is a fleshless extension of hand and arm,
its tapping no longer a mess of unfiltered noise. I know
the precise spot I must go left because the dip in the ground told me so.

In this scary place, when I ride in a car, I pay attention to every curve.
I can tell you, without fail, how to get us home.
You are pleased. So why does it feel like my words are color-bereft?

Since I came to this scary place, my visual cortex has grown and shrunk in turn.
Sound and Touch are silent colonizers.
All neurons must submit; those who do not will die in droves.

So I find kinship among bats,
become a hoarder of details the sighted overlook.
Gradually, the acid of my concentration corrodes the pearl of my uncertainty.

I came to you, hoping for rescue from my scary place —
unclenching my fists, knuckle by knuckle, touching
my palm to your chest, where I thought magic and science did not ring discordant.

But how could I expect so much
from you, from myself,
when I don’t even know your name?

*****

TashaRaellaChemelTasha Raella Chemel is an artist and writer who is currently student-teaching at a Big Picture school. When she isn’t at the pottery studio, she enjoys reading critical theory, seeking out the perfect chai latte, and overanalyzing pop culture. She lives in Winooski, Vermont. You can contact Tasha via email or Facebook.

 

 

*****

{That scary place.}

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