I wrote this on a plane ride home from Mexico. After a couple of years of back-to-back traumatic experiences (a suicidal spouse, a divorce, two car accidents, and the death of my father) I had struggled to feel present in my body and comprehend time. I wanted to accept the things that happened to me, but not let them define my identity. Mexico was an important piece of this healing that helped me separate myself from the trauma.
I make my world small.
I shrink into the already small apartment
And when I leave,
I shrink into an even smaller box
And drive to bigger places where I still feel small.
I make my world small.
I eat the same meals
And never finish the same coffees
I watch the same shows,
Usually with my eyes closed
And miss the same appointments
Until I forget I’m disintegrating
I make my world small.
There are 2.8 million men in Colorado
But I spend my mind ruminating on three
I make my world so small
That I can eventually fold it into my mind
And my mind feels so big
That I somehow feel even smaller
This small world has one small circle with only four stops
Time, money, sex, and doubt
I take the same route
But it always ends with me looking up
Lost for a way out
I make my world small,
But I never stop looking for bigger things
I meet a woman at a bookstore
And we immediately feel important to each other
She tells me I have to go to Mexico with her
I say I want to,
But–money, time, money, time.
I’ll try
I get my own apartment and my world feels enormous.
Until I remember that it isn’t
My father dies
And I make my world smaller
Because I shrink into unexpected mourning.
He was a giant looming over me my entire life
And now he’s gone
So why do I feel smaller than ever?
I meet her again the day after he dies
This time she doesn’t ask if I’m going to Mexico
She tells me, “You’re coming to Mexico”
It is a crack of sunshine that lights my small world
And heats my small home
From March to July
Four of us enter a villa in the small city of Teotihuacan
Lavender grows everywhere
We are served a Four-course meal
Every day at three
And there is a never-ending supply of cinnamon coffee
I am rich.
We walk to the pyramids often
And I realize I am witnessing something
So old, so grand, and so wonderful—every single day.
The world feels big and I am expanding
I am sitting in a temazcal on a cactus farm
With the other three
And an elder we just met.
We are topless
I’ve rubbed fresh aloe steaks all over my body,
Sweat over hot stones for hours,
Smoked his sacred peace pipe,
And cried enough until I could not speak.
My world is thawing out and opening up.
I am rich.
I am staring at a painting
That has stunned me silent and left me open-mouthed
Guadalupe dripping in honey
Not only is it beautiful, but it is unreleased and unfinished and I’m seeing it
While next to the artist that made it
I’m stuck in a moment that few will witness
Glued there by the honey
The bees on the canvas stretch my world open.
I’m rich.
In a hammock
I hold a fluffy Siberian cat with big blue crossed eyes.
Clutching my new favorite book in one hand
And petting him with the other.
We are spinning behind a flower wall
And I can't stop thinking,
I’m rich.
I've descended down into a tunnel under the Pyramid of the Feathered Serpent
Receiving a private tour of one of the greatest archeological findings in history
This world is so much bigger than I’ve ever imagined
I realize this is the closest to the earth I’ve ever been and probably ever will be.
They let me hold an ancient artifact to my breast and I can’t stop thinking,
I am rich.
I’m terrified, but I take a deep breath and declare
‘I won't die because life is a dream, a beautiful dream.’
From the balloon, the world has never looked bigger.
The specific scent of the air over that sacred land on that early morning
With those specific people brings tears to my eyes.
Until I whisper ‘I’m rich’
We are still on the tarmac
But a child on the plane asks ‘Are we on the sky?’
And I smile to myself
I am rich.
Maybe it was the therapy
Maybe it was the mushroom capsules
Maybe it was the friends that fed me to the brim with deep belly laughs
Maybe it was all the animals I held
Or all the prayers in my name
Maybe it was finally being able to hug my family regularly
Maybe it was all those long walks with Carol
Maybe it was the stones I held and inhaled
Maybe it was the best sex of my life, beginning in my thirties
Maybe it was the free concerts
Maybe it was the hours spent in the hot springs
Or the Trazodone
Or all that time alone
Maybe it was finally making somewhere my home.
Maybe it was my week in Mexico
The sacred spaces
The steam in the temazcal
The stone doll
Frida’s house and her blue spilled everywhere for miles
Maybe it was the poetry
But I no longer see my life as ‘poor me’
I am rich.
Poor me, I'm rich.
Oh goodness, what a read. Thank you April, for moving one while remaining still.