Hold Me In The Palm Of Your Mind
The lunar eclipse begins
while you are driving.
I am always in the passenger
seat & do not mind it as a fact
though it concerns me
as a metaphor. How to be
sick & ambitious is a question
I can ask but not yet answer.
The people I hope will heal me
make my diagnosis feel
like a sign that spells
C-A-S-H G-R-A-B in neon
letters. They are as licensed
as the ones whose help is tender
& necessary as light
but harder to find than blue sky
in a west coast winter. The doctor
says it’s not my memory
that keeps me from getting
everything I need at the store.
Rather, that I am inattentive.
As though I should hold all
things in my consciousness.
Avocados always in the palm
of my mind. Distraction
a luxury of the able. The end
of May & already forest fire
haze drops like a veil
over the mountains white
settlers re-named after birds
& trees & men. My own
ability to forget what I am
capable of astonishes me.
I remind myself I can survive
the bike ride one neighbourhood
east & back home. What does this
verb mean, to survive?
A question I keep asking
with my life.
Emily Stewart on “Hold Me In The Palm Of Your Mind”
“Hold Me In The Palm Of Your Mind” is at once conversational and deeply introspective. It captures attention immediately by sharing reactions to fact and to metaphor, then holds it with clever enjambment and the use of everyday tasks and observations to question mental health, disability, and survival.
Kyla Jamieson is a disabled writer who lives and relies on the unceded traditional territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations. Body Count, her début collection of poems, is from Nightwood Editions. Find Kyla on instagram as @airymeantime, or at www.kylajamieson.com.