I spent 5 hours in the ER just to hear that my body is healing itself

In poetry class, a student said they don’t trust a poem that doesn’t have pain.

When the blue sky shines in one gap of clouds it’s like seeing the wet gums of the giant’s mouth we all live in.

I’ve been staring at my own throat and tonsils a lot this week, looking for swollen, for sick. For flocks of seagulls and old church towers and ocean-going tankers.

In the silence of campus I’m growing to love the sounds: the birds, the foghorns, the bells. In my apartment, the anonymous hum of the fridge. I began losing myself, one week into being sick and alone. The first three nights, I freaked out about things I couldn’t control. Then, I loved the world again. Then, I got impatient.

I spent five hours in the ER to be told my body is healing itself. The crows on the edge of the gutters opposite my building are watching me. Sometimes they swoop down and then fly up, directly in front of my window. I’m grateful for their company, for how firm their beaks are, as if none of us are going anywhere.

It bugs me that I can’t write a poem about how a fish uses movement to stay still. That always-effort that holds them upright. How do they sleep?

I move the couch into my room. It seems I can only sleep while sitting up. Apparently, it’s hard for us to find out if fish sleep because they don’t have eyelids or a neocortex. Same issue as whether they feel pain. All of this deserves a poem and I am too tired to write it.

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The windowpanes are wet in hundreds of small oceans. The buildings are grey against a grey sky. “Do not despise the day of small beginnings” runs through my head.

Everyone in class either loved or hated the poem with a dog named “Mayonnaise” and halfway through class, someone pointed out that it’s a hypothetical dog invented by the poet and I felt like I had lost something real.

The news has not improved. On Monday, Meghan told me about Venezuela. I had missed it all, being sick. We prepared questions for Venezuelans. What do you ask? I messaged a Mennonite, a Presbyterian, a Muslim, a Catholic and a Jewish chaplain to ask if we could talk about forgiveness. Only two of them are available.

In Children’s Literature, Tanya said that middle grade literature can address horrible things that happen, but they often do so in the life of someone close to the main character – not the main character themselves. “to give children that one level of remove.” One level of remove, as an adult, feels like undeserved and limited luck.

My friend says she’s looking for better questions in conflict. I am, too. She’s begun to ask, “what is this person trying to protect?” I could probably flip it: what am I trying to protect?

In poetry class, a student said they don’t trust a poem that doesn’t have pain. This is interesting, because I have become protective of my pain and tired of having to prove anything by it. I would rather be driven by curiosity.

When a single crow falls from the sky, the flock of pigeons on the stone tower scatter. When a student asked what kind of creature my creative inspiration is, I said a pigeon. I’m not really sure why.

One of the questions in poetry class was: what is the speaker’s source of power?

Before getting sick, I laid out 88 pages of poetry manuscript on the living room floor. I’m trying to add another 20 poems but I’m a different person then who I was in 2020 and I’m far from the place where I wrote those poems.

I look up from reading news stories of protests in Cuba and the pigeons are circling again, at eye level, outside my window. Watching them alters my heartbeat. Their wings move in the same rhythm but the direction is syncopated. It is a cacophony of wings. A single pigeon breaks off, chooses a different building. Beneath them a woman is carrying a large, striped bag. It isn’t raining yet. It looks like a paper bag.

Once, a friend said one of my poems made him feel nostalgic and that it was ridiculous to feel nostalgic because I was writing about a place he saw every day. It was the best kind of compliment. The poem was about everything in that place that was unseen in darkness. It was about the pigeons. The presence right outside your window and at your feet and yet you miss it, I miss it.

Yesterday, when I saw the sun outside my window I went running outside to catch it, only to miss it. I wandered with sore feet, watching the sun hit the Canadian flag high above the buildings, turning it orange, and I wished I could be in one of the high-rise windows, momentarily blinded. •

Art by Maaike (me) with foraged inks.

As promised, a long essay that bounces between MFA classes and pigeons!

For poetry class, we’ve been given the assignment of journaling daily. I smushed some of what I wrote together for today. Please don’t worry: I was sick over Christmas break and was thoroughly healed before attending my first class. :)

My current read is Sing Like a Fish so you can count one echolocation showing up in an essay or poem in the near future. :) What are you reading?

Take care,

Maaike