on breaking your neck.

I hurt myself, but now I'm [mostly] better. I can get up now, which is nice, since lying in bed and staring at the ceiling is NOT very much fun, let me tell you. I attempted to write this while lying down, but writing it very difficult when you can't sit up or raise your arms over your head, so, mostly, I just repeated it over and over in my head to memorize it for later. It didn't work. I forgot most of it. So here's my other version.

Don't worry. I like to make things seem much worse than they are. I'm a wimp like that. But, really, it's a scary thing not being able to move. You don't realize how much you rely upon movement to live until...you can't. I thought I was paralyzed.



I rolled over
and snapped:
clean,
like a candy-cane.
--Right in the crook;
in that tender,
delicate
place,
held together [dangling uselessly]
by thin strips of
plastic.

If I was
plastic,
I would not break
so easily.
I would crinkle and
crease: fold.
Oh, please believe me:
I am not so
    weak;
vulnerable and
sweet
as they say.

I woke up
as my body
fell asleep down:
sleepily.
Like a tulip
against the elements,
I forgot to close
up
and zip shut
my faults [lips, legs,
eyes plastered with
moon-shine.]
I caught too much
water in the spa
ces between blinks,
and the rain?
It broke me.

My head lays[broken]
demented,
catawampus,
catatonic,
and my body is somewhere
down
there [at least, I hope so]:
petrified; plastic limbs
boneless, joint-less.
But I can wiggle my toes.
Oh god,
I can wiggle my toes,
and believe me,
     that means I'm alive.


I may be alive,
but that soft,
tender
place at the
base
of my skull
cracked
[like the tip of
my last fucking reed]
and now all I can do
is try not to
black-
out,
because my shoulders
feel much too
fragile
to support
gravity
and my head is
lulling about
unsustainably.


I don't know
how to feel more
useless.