there is a room inside of me and it is mostly empty like when you’re moving or painting and everything is taken out like that song by the weakerthans, “sun in an empty room” everything is bare walls with finishing nail holes from hanging up birthday banners and balloons and christmas cards fading in the sunlight
the table that used to be in the room was given away on facebook marketplace to a college student who needed it for philosophy study sessions and beer pong there used to be an old trunk of costumes and skins and masks, acoutrements of identity and people that i used to be inside the trunk was a crystal necklace made of hemp, sweaty and soft and of course there was the dirty angel wings there was the scuffed patent leather mary jane shoes there was the vintage black dress inside this room there’s an outline on the wall by the window where a cross used to hang, surrounded in a nicotine stain halo
like with most almost empty rooms there is a small pile of objects on the floor, a pennant from a small town that i don’t remember purchasing, an empty coffee cup, a bunting banner that is sun faded, and a birthday card that was never sent, there’s an old bandage with a few rusty stains, trash i haven’t taken out yet
i cross the threshold and open the window and the air inside shifts for just a moment i linger in the doorway for longer than i would like to i leave the door open when i go
there’s an old superstition that goes something like “the things we do on new year’s day will be the things we do all year”, and there’s also more superstitions about things we “should not” do.
today is new year’s day and i was feeling a lil superstitious today so i didn’t do the laundry or sweep the house. i didn’t cook food or wash any dishes.
instead i took a drive and listened to music. i went to the thrift store because it was open for some reason and it was oddly busy like maybe other people were feeling restless and strange like i was. i bought a book at the thrift store about ancient history. i took the highway through the reservation to see my mother and took her a gift. she made me toast and honey.
she has been sitting at home doing indigenous beadwork and watching true crime on tv. she is beading beautiful amulets and baubles while someone on the television describes the grisly murder of a teenage girl. “people are sick,” she declares while picking up red beads with her long thin beading needle.
i told her that new year’s day superstitions say that the first visitor to the home should have dark hair and bring gifts and she eyes me warily. in the superstition it’s supposed to be a man, but that sounds like sexist horseshit to me but the guy who delivers my vegetarian pizza later has dark hair so i guess i’m good.
“сука” my mother says as she drops some beads on the ground.
she likes the gift i have brought her, a framed photo she took of me. i look a little ghastly in the photo, pale with my long hair a mess around my shoulders, but i am smiling in the photo because i am in love. i hate the photo when i first get it back from the film development lab, but as i’ve studied it, i realize that i look, maybe not ghastly, but simply, achingly human.
i stopped wearing makeup last summer after attending sweatlodge. i took out almost all my piercings, too. i still have all of my tattoos because those are harder to get rid of, but you can’t see them in the photo anyways.
i ask my mother if she would make me a pocket altar i saw on instagram because my mother is an excellent seamstress who is constantly making something. she studies the photos i show her and by the time i get home she’s already made a prototype. she’s even done beadwork on it.
she told me once that doing beadwork makes her feel closer to my father, who grew up on the reservation and was his kokum’s favourite. his kokum did beadwork and made moccasins and could skin a rabbit faster than the boys she raised.
i tell my mother about my bad day at work and she takes it in while smoking on the porch.
“suffering is a constant,” she says after a while and she shakes her head.
i go home and have a bath and wash my hair and drink water because i realize i’ve been running on diet coke and black coffee and that’s probably why i feel weird. i order vegetarian pizza and read. i write poetry and work on my blog.
i burn candles and incense and tonight before bed, i’m going to do a big smudge and really sit with that.
life is strange, sometimes and it’s painful and weird. i reach out to some people i know and tell them i love them. maybe i could tell the world, too.
so – i love you.
happy new year.
i hope this year is a kind one and i hope that we all find the rest our bodies are seeking through the darkness of january.
hospital vespers 