LOCATION: Austin, TX
RECORDS: 16
LATEST RECORD: 4 months ago
JOINED: July 28, 2010
A.R.Perry's Featured RECords
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The world is full of it, Of you, of me, of them, Everything it gobbles up, Sickness hidden in common throws, Threads spun together to hide its rows. Canvas smeared with crimson hue, Black and tar and water spilled, Glass scattered on the stair, The sky keeps rolling by. Let it out and breathe again, Hear the scream of the trees, Listen to the tattered breeze, Fingers cut and yet still reaching, How do we keep on hitting? Vaccine, there must be one, It has to exist somewhere in the sun, A sun that hasn’t shown its face, Wonder where it went away… When did it all get like this? The mange the fear the tingle fast, Where we all heave a sigh, And just keep on going on with normal life. Am I blind or just can’t see? What do others seem to be? I’m confused I want it out, This buzz of always electronic sound, I can’t hear my heart its beat, It’s faltering in the heat. The world is full of it, Of you, of them, and maybe me, It wants it all or nothing, yes, I don’t think we can win. |
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I don’t remember much about my life during my surgeries. I guess it’s a defense mechanism my mind built in from the traumatic events of that year; or it could be that I really don’t try that hard to recall anything from then. But ever since the diagnosis that I had little more than 72 hours to live I’d been… am... trying much harder. It comes in little flashes now-being hooked up to so many machines I could barely move, their constant beeping one of the few comforting things in that over-white room that smelled too strongly of antiseptic. I was forced to face my demons face first. And, for the only time in ten years I went willingly into a hospital to look at my old room. It was much smaller than I had thought it was. Maybe it had been all the morphine and antibiotics, or that I was eleven, but in my minds-eye it had been a dark and cavernous space… Always too cold or too hot, never equilibrium. Now, all the fright of a child was gone and I could look at it for what it was. A small room where I had stayed for two weeks. That’s all, just two weeks. How those two weeks had been such a powerful force in my life until my dying days was beyond me in hindsight now. The scar on my face tingled a bit, as if in recognition of the place it had been born, but I ignored it. Instead, I focused purely on the overwhelming sense of peace and acceptance. As if my mind had been roiling this whole time in an effort to get me here, to heal itself… Now, it seemed silly how my palms had sweated and body shook when rolling up to the tall and imposing form of the Seaton Surgical Center. So many bad memories had come to my mind and we had sat in the car for over an hour, one precious hour, as I had cried and wanted to leave. Though this was one mountain conquered in the remaining two days I had there was another that haunted the very house I lived in. Even miles away that drawer in the entertainment center called out to me. The one that held visual proof that my tumor, my trauma had been real and had changed my life forever in those short weeks. It wasn’t until I turned around; content with the knowledge that this room had been what had helped to save my life when I was young, that my eyes fell on my mother. She looked as white as I felt. With her blue eyes looking glassy in the lost memories that the bed held she was staring at where her cot had been. Right next to mine, seated there day and night, and I felt a profound sense of gratitude. If she hadn’t been there… I don’t know if I would be as forgiving for this moment as I was. “Mom,” I said with a small laugh in my voice. A laugh I hadn’t meant to voice but came bubbling to the surface anyway. I was always bad at hiding my emotions. She started out of her revere and swung on me, her blond hair bouncing at the sudden movement. “What?” it wasn’t impatient but it had a small snap to it. I couldn’t help the somber grin that spread across my features. It had hit her hard that she would be the one to bury me and I was starting to realize that she had just as many demons in this room, in my life, than I did. “C’mon, I want to go home. I wanna look at the pictures in that drawer,” my voice broke at the end of the sentence. I still wasn’t sure if I was strong enough to look at them. When we had found them moving last year I had a breakdown right there in the middle of the living room. I had firmly locked them away and swore that I wouldn’t look at them again. I pressed those emotions so far down into my being that feeling them now it was ten-fold as what it had been then. I was terrified. As we both exited the room I gave one final look back, not sure what I was hoping to see. Part of me had both died and been born in that room. I guess I owed it one last glance as mother and I made our way out. The pictures were harder to take than I remember. They sat in front of me on the floor, the surfaces shined over by the glare of the sun, as I rested my back against the couch. I couldn’t remember the last time I cringed so much just looking at something. And that looking had brought on things I wasn’t prepared for. The smell of knock out gas, I never suggest anyone use bubble gum flavored it will make you gag-in fact just get the I.V. it hurts but its faster-the feel of them pulling out the drainage tube that had been inserted into the right side of my head, and the feel of the gauze being all over me. It made my stomach churn. I suppose I was going through all the stages of grief at once. Anger, denial, bargaining, and now I just didn’t want to look at them ever again. Why had I done this again? Firming my lips together I realized that this was purely for me because mom had taken one look at those pictures and sighed, her features creasing. She had never looked her age until that moment. Frowning, I slid down from my perch and once more picked up the corner of one of the five pictures. It was sharp and crisp, the effects of me not wanting to be near it and no one touching them since the day I had my surgeries, and pressed into the pads of my fingertips. The first one was me laying there, my head pressed into the Sylvester cat fleece pillow mom had bought for me just the night before the surgery. There were tubes running from everywhere. An oxygen mask covered my face-I still remember how funny it had tasted and caused me to vomit a few times-the yellow feeding tube that stretched its way over my head from the depths of my right nostril, the I.V. was hooked up to two different bags, and finally all the heart monitor wires crisscrossed over my chest to the machine. Gauze was wrapped tightly about my skull and you could see where they had shaved my head in order to get the muscle they needed. I had been born with a rare lymphatic tumor and when they had removed it parts of it had moved into my facial muscle. They had to take some from my skull and attach it to my face. I nearly gagged at seeing the gruesome wound that was on my face. They had to remove nearly half of the bottom right of my face and there were huge pink suture were what was keeping the side of my face unaffected by the tumor and the newly injured tissue together. My fingers found their way to my scar in an absent minded touch. It was shocking but now I couldn’t look away. It brought back all the bad memories, sure, like having to have something shoved up your urethra. No matter what they say, that is always more than ‘uncomfortable’, it freaking hurts. It also brought back the good memories. Like, even though I wasn’t supposed to have solid foods my mother got me a burger and fries for my birthday. It had been, and probably always will be, the best burger of my life after not being able to talk or chew anything for three months. After the shock and the rush of negative emotions came the same odd feeling of… everything being all right. It didn’t define me anymore, and it hadn’t in a very long time. A chuckle managed to squeeze its way out of my tight chest, my stomach clenching and tears forming at the corner of my eyes. Why had it taken so long? Why had I waited so long to do this? I could’ve been a different person, I could’ve enjoyed High School, I could’ve dated whoever I wanted; there were so many could’s it was dizzying. Shaking my head I fought off the tears with resilience. That same stubbornness I had suffered to form during my surgeries and my life, a belief that crying solves nothing. It was a problem it seemed I would die with. And I was okay with it. With all of it. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I'll be blunt with anyone who's reading this. I have had some serious issues and all the surgeries part did happen-it's kinda the reason FOR my issues but I digress-and I was asked to take part in a competition where the prompt was we had 72 hours to live. What would we do? Mine was pretty simple and humble, I just wanted to go back to my hospital room and confront something that's been haunting me since I was eleven. Don't even get me started on the pictures. They're still there, in the drawer, but I don't think I have the strength to look at them yet. So, they'll just have to wait for me. This was therapeutic in a way. I came to peace with a lot of my problems through this, so hey, even if I don't win I still get something out of it. |
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Feel free to critique. Always love a constructive one.
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Coming through the open window, Its sound like a chorus, The streets beneath this rotted house, Under the blaring dying streetlight, The moon had long since made its debut. My skin it itches, Like a junkie coming down, Hairs on my arms feel like bugs, Crawling and creeping along, No amount of scratching helps. It’s an empty feeling, I can wait, To fill up again with something, Something great to make you, What? Jealous? You? Never. The sheets on this bed are rough, When did they become like sand paper? Grating and scraping I can’t sleep, So I pad around the rooms, Listless and staring… Coming and going, coming and going, Like a great wind that ruffles, My drapes are still stained from that time, Do you remember? Probably not, probably never… You’re a tornado coming sweeping through, Disturbing all and staying few, Stop and wait, There’s no time have to be going, Before the sun is setting. You’re a tornado, And I’m just a passerby. |
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What’s the world coming to when, as soon as you wake up and flip on that blasted noise box, the news is on and rambling on about some shooting? Usually, like a good little girl of my generation that has been desensitized to the violence going on around me thanks to mass coverage, I ignore it and go on about my day. But, today it was different. Today, as I took a nice deep sip of my overly sweet coffee that I had put too much creamer into I was confronted for the first time in years with very real panic. The sounds on the television became nothing more than a muffled murmur, somewhere off in the distance that made my ears tingle in recognition but my brain didn’t want to listen. No, I had turned off and on in one single minute. The reason, you might ask? There had been a shooting at the college most of my friend attend… At nine in the morning someone had opened fire into the main library of the University of Texas. That was all I had time to process before my phone had flung into my hands. Usually, and I seem to keep using this word but it fits here, I hate my phone. It connects me when I don’t want to see the outside world. When I’m alone in my hovel and tackatacking away on my keyboard until the late nights and early mornings I don’t like to be disturbed; I’m a hermit at my best, and an introvert bitch at my best. Though in this moment and time, it became my best friend and I was thanking god for the invention of cell phones. Panic wasn’t a sensation I was used to. That metallic taste in your mouth like you just bit into your tongue, all the muscles bunching up on her back and a headache starting to bloom in front of your eyes, and a tingling sensation in the very tips of your brain. It was uncomfortable and my chest hurt, my heart was lodged in my throat and I felt like I was numb. I couldn’t count how many times my fingers slipped on the tiny little keyboard that was on my phone. Or how many times I swore at it like it was stopping me from getting a hold of my friends… Panic gave way to rage almost instantly and it prickled its way down my entire body. It felt like something had broken over my scalp and while I waited to hear from my friends and family there were only a few words streamlining through my brain-a mind still deaf to the television in front of me. If any of my friends had been hurt, or worse killed, then whoever had did it and was still alive would soon wish they weren’t. My friends had been through thick and thin with me, through my darkest times and through my brightest moments, and they loved me all the same. There was an unconditional bond there. They were my family, brothers and sisters in arms to help defend against a world that seemed determined to hammer us all down. It was when I got the first text and call back that I relaxed. My anger and fear filled haze lifted and the reporter talking on the television’s words broke through the cotton of my ears. “There don’t seem to be any victims of the attack, the shooter killed himself and the university is being brought out of lockdown so that students and family can get back to their normal routine…” It’s amazing how fast you can feel emotions. For so long I had ignored those sensations in favor of control, and all it took was one single moment to break that and bring me to my knees. I learned something about myself today; it’s something both terrifying and awe inspiring at the same time. |
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There was a time, When everything you said made me, Let go of my reality, And float away. Did you realize, finally, That for those four years it was, Blind faith and love, But you let me down. Do you know, How much it takes to let go? To drop the pain below, Starting over again *too scary* I never saw a day, With you not having that wall, Arms crossed, chin held high, You refused me, always. Do you know, How hard this is to let go of? To make it all just go away, Still your face lingers here *too scary* And do you get it? I’m screaming my heart out, This pain has to subside, Starting over again, there’s now him. Four years of night, Now there’s a shaft of light, I get to leave you here, in your misery, Knowing you won’t… miss me. It seems no matter what we do in life others are always going to let us down. This seems to be even more prevalent in love and relationships. In the beginning your lover can do no wrong, and though occasionally they annoy you, just being there is enough for you to forgive them. But, after a while, that ceases to be enough. We become greedy. We want all of our mate, all the time, or nothing at all. It's sad. It's as sad as it is common, and it would seem that no matter what we're all the same in that regard. Perhaps I was too weak. I wanted someone more than I thought was possible. Over time, though, I started to see things. I don't know if he was like that at the start, but he began to get more and more out of control and reckless. Unbound, it was one of the things that attracted me to him, but now it repeals me. And, as the relationship began to fall apart, I saw just where it had gone wrong. We both got too greedy. We saw things in each other we did not like. At all. And I suppose it's a good thing, in the end, after all you're supposed to be with someone for the rest of your life you can actually stand. At the time it really hurt. But now, months later, it's gotten a lot softer, and I can think about him without that twisting knife sensation. Love is an anomaly in our existence. We both spite at it like a blight and worship it like a god; we know it's irrationality but when we don't have it there's an ache. As the old saying goes, can't live with it, can't live without it. |
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Waking up is hard to do. Sleep, a wonderful thing, is difficult to let go of when you just want five more minutes. Then five more, then another, and another, until you wonder why you're sleeping so much. Sometimes, it's a good reason. It's that you didn't sleep at all the night before because your sleeping medications are starting to not work-again-or that your cat kept you awake by meowing all night, or that you were worried, or that... you're just tired. So tired. Or, it could be something different, more ominious. That's what I remember. Waking up was difficult then, there. My eyelids were like lead. They were heavy, as if each lash were held by a solid weight that kept them shut. Glue, or when I had pink eye when I was six, might be a more apt description. I don't know. I just know that it felt wrong. My whole body was sick. I felt so... bad. Like a train had hit me. Full speed. No stopping. And had kept going with me under the tracks. That kind of waking up you wonder what the hell happened the night-or in this case hours-before. You might not want to know, you might, but there's a nagging. My eyes had finally opened, begrudingly, and I was met with the most horrendous sight of my young eleven years. White. Nothing but white. Even as the lights above had been dimed, for my comfort evidently, it was nothing but blinding, searing, annoying clean egg shell. The window next to me had the blinds drawn up and tight, again supposedly for my comfort-sometimes patients didn't like to go in during the day and wake up early in the morning-and there were tubes running along the wall next to my face. The world was too blurry to make out much else. Other than what I felt. I felt my head pounding, the sudden bare cushion of the Sylvester pillow behind me, the cool rush of the needle in my arm, and... gauze. Lots of guaze. My mom was making a fuss next to me. I could hear that. But, for some reason, my right ear was silent. Muffled. Was something covering it? Why? That hadn't been talked about. And if it had, I hadn't been there. Then again, I was ten, what would I have said? Leave my skull alone? Fat lot of good that would have done. I remember when my eyes finally focused that I was sick. Not sick sick, not like when you have the flu, the kind of sick you are when you are heavily dosed on something. So this is what Morphine felt like. It felt like a wool blanket over your face. You weren't really numb. I could still feel the pain resonating from my face, but, it was far away. So far away. I was drifting on some foriegn cloud. "Mom...?" "Shhhh, honey, the doctor says you shouldn't talk. You'll open the sutures and... move your feeding tube." Funny. I had seen the feeding tube before the surgery. I had thought it was awfully long. So that's what that lump was. No wonder I was having a hard time swallowing. "My head hurts." "Go back to sleep." "Don't wanna..." But I did. It wasn't me that wanted to go back under though, it was that pesky sleep. Sometimes waking up is hard. Especially when you just had a tumor removed from your face. In that moment, I think I deserved five more minutes. |
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