Transcript

I’m Shira Erlichman, and this is The Slowdown.

Three days a week, I sat on Claudia’s couch, where we exchanged pleasantries before digging in. She didn’t take my insurance, but offered to see me for 25 bucks a session, out of pocket, for God knows what reason. “How are you?” She’d ask as I set my things down, “Fine,” I’d say. But all the while I was thinking, How? Am I? How am I even here?

One day, when again she asked with a breeze in her voice, “How are you?” I sighed. “Do you mind not asking me how I am?” I preferred sitting in silence than having to fling another, “Fine,” “Good,” or “Okay.”

I’d just spent six days in a mental hospital. I’d witnessed my brain burn and collapse. And in the fallout, the people I loved most were the people I couldn’t rely on. The normal social contract — polite conversation, exchanging niceties — all of that wasn’t for me, anymore. Claudia took me up on my request. Suddenly, in that room, everything was traded for quiet. We sat. Not in confrontation, but in the sweet fertility of silence. When it naturally broke, there was space. I could be what I was. And what I was wasn’t even close to fine.

Today’s poem is a generous x-ray. It offers us a secret look at the bubbling beauties and festering fears a single human being holds, and can no longer bear to hide.

List of Things to Say Instead of “I’m Fine”
by Marlin M. Jenkins

my blood moves like tectonic plates: so slow 
one might not notice, but notice first, please, 
before the earthquake. 

* 

i have always been afraid of waves, how they say: 
i know                                                                                       what it’s like 
to crumble                                                                           over myself and 
hear my crashing simply 
called                                                                                        beautiful 

* 

the syncopation of my heart’s              swung notes 
is more than                                                                                                           metronome. but 
not quite a full         song, either. 

* 

i woke up this morning 
as a houseplant not watered 
in weeks. when i tried 
to move, wilted pieces 
of brown flesh crumbled 
onto the carpet, waited 
there for the vacuum. 

* 

i am tired                                   of how this skin 
makes lonely, how afraid i am 
that i’ll say i’m               black 
and scared                                and no one 
will listen—that i will say 
i am proud                                 and be 
perceived therefore as threat. 

* 

today is that ice cube song, 
but because a good day means 
so much forgetting. 

* 

something in this city 
is always on fire. before 
the neighbor’s car it was 
the house around the corner. 
before that, the trash can 
on the curb the night 
before garbage day.
 
* 

remember playing the floor is lava? 
like that, except the lava is also 
the walls and ceiling and furniture. 

maybe moses’ feet were burned 
when he removed 
his sandals at the feet of the bush. 
what saint has not lived 
constant pain? 

* 

hansel and gretel left 
bread crumbs when they should have 
left a trail of blood, 
held their faces       down and 
admitted they were lost. 

* 

i no longer have to meet yearly 
with the cardiologist. i will not miss 
the tug of ekg stickers pulling off 
body hair, but i miss the jelly on chest, 
the dull pressure of the instrument 
pressing skin around ribs and sternum, 
to see my center on a screen— 
yes, there are parts in here 
that are pumping, 
working, despite. 

"List of Things to Say Instead of 'I'm Fine'" by Marlin M. Jenkins. Used by permission of the poet.