I will be taking a break from blogging for the month of July.
I hope to be back at it in August.
Please don’t blow your hands off while I’m gone.
Author: Kiki Writes
Rumored to be a writer. Never hip. Land of Lincoln Cleavage Queen three years running.
Poem–“So, I’m a Sin”
A timely poem since it’s Pride Month and I wrote it last week in response to a meme someone posted on Facebook. It said something to the effect that we should be spending the month celebrating God rather than celebrating sin. My immediate response was, “So, I’m a sin, huh?”
Then I unfriended them and started working on this poem.
You could say that I helped them by removing a sin from their life.
It’s nothing fancy. Just my usual free verse style.
Stay queer, my dears.
So, I’m a Sin
So, I’m a sin.
Sent by God to test you,
the Devil to tempt you,
man to corrupt you.
I’m a challenge and an insult
to your great faith.
My very existence is a
disturbance, a slight
to your Jesus.
So, I’m a sin.
My ticket already punched for Hell,
I’m just looking for someone to
road trip there with me.
My pleas to be accorded the same rights
you covet like a precious hoard?
A clever ruse to get you in the handbasket with me.
A trick only the Devil could play,
that only a sin could play.
So, I’m a sin.
Preying on your Good Christian sensibilities
of love the sinner, hate the sin.
Because the sin and the sinner are so close
you can’t tell one from the other,
and you’re not willing to risk your afterlife
on getting the difference wrong.
You won’t waste your Good Christian kindness
on a person you’d rather judge.
So, I’m a sin.
I spend a whole month, thirty days start to finish,
celebrating my continued existence in spite
rather than giving glory to your god,
a god that you say loves me, made me in his image,
and wants to punish me
for embodying his design.
You want me to celebrate a god
who’s already condemned me? Please.
So, I’m a sin.
Mortal. Unforgivable.
Unapologetic. Unrepentant.
Just as your God created.
Just as your God intended.
A final exam that you failed.
Yes, I’m going to hell,
my Good Christian,
and I’ll see you there.
The Bisexual Journey Continues
I’m forty-five years old. I came out as bisexual at seventeen. I knew from a young age that I was into both men and women.
It’s very easy to assume that my sexuality journey was short, sweet, and to the point. There’s nothing more to learn. Like those concrete heterosexuals, I knew from a young age that I was 50/50 on my bi-ness. Done and dusted.
For some people, that is very true. The journey is more like a trip to the mailbox. Got my info. I’m good to go. And I thought that was what my journey was. I had myself sorted from a young age. I was good to go.
But that’s not quite how it worked out for me.
When it comes to my own bisexuality, I find myself regularly checking in to verify that I’m still bisexual. After all, there’s a lot of messaging from both the queer and straight communities that bisexuality isn’t valid. Maybe I am confused. Maybe I’m pretending to be something I’m not. But every check-in has verified my bisexual identity so far. Sorry, haters.
As I’ve gone through my life, the questioning has continued in light of other people’s journeys intersecting with mine and my continuing education in and from the queer community. Am I attracted to trans people? Am I attracted to non-binary people? What does it mean if I am or if I’m not?
I’ve adjusted my identity a little as result of my answers to these questions. Trans men are men and trans women are women, so they fall in my already determined attraction categories. I’ve also found myself occasionally attracted to people who identify as non-binary, gender fluid, or agender. While I still use the bisexual label, I will also refer to myself as Bi+ or queer. Pansexual might apply, but it doesn’t feel right for me, so I don’t use it.
Recently, I had an epiphany that has once again altered my self-perception a little, a shift within my bisexual identity.
Quick recap: Sexuality is who you are sexually attracted to. Romantic attraction is who you’re romantically attracted to. Sexual attraction and romantic attraction often match up, but not always. In my case, I always thought that they did. I considered myself 50/50 sexually attracted to men and women, and 50/50 romantically attracted to men and women. Bisexual, bi romantic.
Turns out, that’s not entirely accurate.
I am bisexual and I am bi romantic, but it’s not the 50/50 split I always thought it was.
I’m not exactly sure what the process was that led me to this realization. Like I said, it was something of an epiphany. Whatever the case, it occurred to me that I’m actually more sexually attracted to women and I’m more romantically attracted to men.
In retrospect, this is obvious. I knew I was attracted to women before I realized I was attracted to men, yet most of my romantic crushes were on guys. It’s easier for me to find women attractive than it is for me to find men attractive. But when I think about having a partner, I think about that partner being a man more often than I think about them being a woman. Part of that could be latent heteronormative conditioning, but I think it’s more just how my romantic attraction works.
I look forward to exploring this new found understanding of myself.
Another twist on the journey I thought I’d finished.
The Clock on the Wall
For those of you just tuning in, I work at my local library. It’s a small town library, so we have a staff of less than twenty people. I have to admit that it’s probably the best job I’ve ever had, thanks largely in part to the people that I work with. They’re a fun bunch.
Which means I get away with shit that I probably wouldn’t get away with at other jobs.
For example, the clock on the wall.
When you work the circulation desk like I do, one of your responsibilities is signing people up for the library computers that sit behind the desk. It’s very low key. We just write down their name, what computer they use, and what time they sign in. Part of this is for computer usage statistics, but it’s also in case someone leaves something behind at the computer. Knowing their name and the time, we have a better idea of who it belongs to. Who leaves things at the computers? Everybody. We’ve found all sorts of things over there.
The computers sit along the wall behind the circulation desk with the computer screens facing us (we don’t care what you’re doing, but we will take a glance now and then to make sure its library appropriate). There’s a sort of half-wall partition that separates the computers from the aisle just behind the circ desk. On one side of that is a where a clock usually hangs. That’s where I and several of my coworkers automatically look when we sign people in for the computers.
For whatever reason -be it poor mounting, poor clock design, bad luck, or the ghost of our very first librarian Mrs. Rose- the clock that we had liked to fall off the wall. Just take a leap. Sometimes we could attribute it to someone walking by, but sometimes it just happened. A couple of times the clock was damaged, but repairable. Once it was fixed, it went back on the wall. It’s final fall was a fatal one, though, and a few days after its demise, it was replaced.
That clock lasted a few weeks before it, too, fell off the wall.
The decision was made not to put the clock back up there. Instead, we have a small clock that sits on the back of the circulation desk. Everyone knows its there. I know its there. And yet-
I still look at the damn wall when I sign someone into the computer.
I cannot seem to break this habit. Even with a clock in front of me on the desk, even with a watch on my wrist, even with my phone in my pocket, I still look to the wall for the time. And the time, folks, is not there.
In an act of desperation to help me break the habit, I put up a new clock, the clock that you see in the picture. A clock to remind my dumbass that the time no longer sits on the wall. I end up looking at that 404 clock multiple times a shift because I. Will. Not. Learn. My director and my coworkers thought it was funny and were apparently fine with its existence.
The other day I came in for my shift to find my clock on the circ desk. I thought a coworker had revealed their buzzkill nature and took it down, but no.
It fell off the wall.
I guess Mrs. Rose is the buzzkill after all.
It Was Her Birthday
This past Sunday would have been Carrie’s 52nd birthday.
Carrie wasn’t the biggest fan of her birthday because it was a reminder that she was getting older, and she didn’t want to be reminded of that. I suppose she’d like her birthday more now since she’ll never get older.
No doubt there are some people who might think that observation was in poor taste, but she wouldn’t. She’d get what I was saying and she’d agree.
If you thought you missed me saying something about Carrie’s birthday on Sunday, let me assure you that you didn’t. Thanks to social media, I found another way that I’m weird.
It turns out that I don’t like publicly acknowledging the birthdays of those close to me who have passed or their association with certain holidays or the anniversaries of their departures from this mortal plane, the dates they stopped getting older. I know a lot of people do this and it’s perfectly fine and acceptable and I do not begrudge them in the least. I’ve read some very sweet and touching posts in this vein. It’s just not something I want to do. I’m not comfortable grieving publicly. I’m not given to sharing the bitter and the sweet of some memories online.
“But what about this post?!”
I need you to not be pedantic for two seconds, okay? You know what this is. This is me defending my apparent insensitivity because I don’t feel comfortable publicly expressing my grief with memorial posts on social media.
I once joked with Carrie that I wrote “happy birthday” on her Facebook even though we lived in the same house because it doesn’t count unless you say it on social media. Sometimes I feel that way when I see people post sweet things about departed loved ones on holidays, birthdays, and anniversaries. I feel like people think that I’m not grieving or keeping loved ones in my heart and thoughts if I don’t say it out loud for everyone to like, heart, and care.
This is 100% a perception thing. I certainly don’t think that about other people. But I have a tendency to think the worst of myself, so I believe that everyone else does, too. I’m sure not everyone does. They probably should, but I’m sure they don’t. The most likely scenario is that they don’t think of it at all. It wouldn’t occur to them to judge me like that. I don’t occupy their thoughts the way I occupy mine.
But in case it does cross your mind, in case you do wonder, in case you are inclined to judge, I do mark the birthdays, the holidays, the anniversaries. I just do it quietly, to myself. I dwell on it as long as my heart can take and then I go on with my day.
There is no wrong answer here when it comes to dealing with such complex and complicated feelings. Some people feel better opening up and some people keep it close.
I’ll keep mine (mostly) to myself.
Poem–“Tell Me Anyway”
I regret to inform you that I’ve decided to do a monthly poem. I enjoyed torturing you all with the Magnificent Seven series too much. Also, I’m lazy and I don’t always want to write a blog post, but I’ve got gobs of poems that will never be formally published because as we know, I only write terrible poetry.
This one is from the latest Poetry Month Poem-a-Day. The day’s theme was a Two-for-Tuesday theme. On Tuesdays, the themes were usually flip sides. In this case it was Tell Me/Don’t Tell Me.
I decided to do a triolet, which involves repeating lines and a specific rhyme scheme. It’s actually pretty easy to do once you get the right lines to repeat.
Tell Me Anyway
Some secrets should be kept,
but tell me anyway.
I’ll pretend I heard them while I slept.
Some secrets should be kept,
left under the rugs they were swept.
But those are the best ones to say.
Some secrets should be kept,
but tell me anyway.
Chemo Tuesdays
As I wrote about in my catch-up post, my dad is undergoing chemo treatment for lung cancer. What started as a six hour infusion every three weeks became a weekly three hour infusion because the man couldn’t stay out of the hospital. So far, it’s worked. He’s been getting his chemo in and he hasn’t been back to the hospital (knock all of the available wood and then some).
His very first chemo treatment back in December was on a Thursday. After two hospital stays in quick succession at the end of the month (the first for anxiety, the second for the flu which he got while in the hospital for anxiety) threw off his chemo schedule, he got back on the cancer treatment horse in January, this time on a Tuesday. He made two chemo appointments in a row (January and early February) before he fell off the wagon, landing in the hospital at the end of February with pneumonia.
Once he got sprung, his oncologist made the call to switch to weekly treatments. Since March, I’ve been taking him to his chemo treatments every Tuesday morning, three weeks on, one week off, but that off week is a check in appointment with the oncology NP to make sure he’s doing okay.
So, every Tuesday since the beginning of March, we’ve been making a thirty-five minute drive to the oncology/hematology office. We park in the tricky, too small lot with the entrance that desperately needs to be graded. I go to the bathroom as soon as we get here because I’m over 40 and my morning blood pressure medicine has a water pill in it. We see the same receptionists, the same phlebotomists, the same nurses, the same patients.
This has become our routine.
It’s a lot of people’s routine. As I said, we see a lot of familiar faces on Tuesday. It seems most people like to keep a routine, too. Not all of them end up back in the treatment room, and Dad is usually too busy coloring to pay much attention to the other patients, but he’s come to recognize a few of them when he sees them.
Camping out in the waiting room, though, I’ve become very familiar with many of the patients as well as the ebb and flow of the Tuesday schedule.
Tuesdays are the clinic’s busiest day. The morning is particularly busy. The word “bustling” was made for the waiting room on a Tuesday morning. Patients are checking in, getting their blood work done, getting their vitals taken, going to their appointments, getting their treatments. Some days there’s a real ocean feel to the waiting room, the crowd swelling and the chairs filling, and then receding as patients are taken care of. The tide goes out around eleven and the pace slows over the lunchtime hour and for the rest of the afternoon.
I’ve come to expect the faces of certain people in this sea. Amber and her boyfriend. Miss Stephanie and her son. Miss Shirley and her son. Miss Fay. Anita. Wayne and his wife. Janet and her granddaughter. Diane and Lisa, two long-haulers who’ve become good friends, joined by their disease. I can see how this happens. You see the same faces every week. For a bunch of sick people, everyone is friendly, typically in a good mood. So, you say hello, get to chatting, and the next thing you know, you’re friends for life. I imagine that it helps to see a familiar face when you’re going through something as difficult as an extended cancer treatment. You might not look forward to the chemo (or more accurately, the after effects), but you’re more motivated to make your appointment when you know a friend is waiting for you.
The staff have a great handle on this. Even if you don’t have a chemo buddy, you’re going to see some familiar, friendly faces that are going to make your day easier. Going weekly, Dad has quickly become a favorite person to some of the staff. He has a way of being endearing when he’s giving you shit.
There’s the unfamiliar faces, too. The new people filling out their induction paperwork, looking nervously around the waiting room, trying to adjust to their new health circumstances and getting the vibe. I want to tell them that they’re in good hands. That if they’re in here often enough, long enough, these faces are going to become familiar. They might even make a friend to help get them through.
My favorite part of Chemo Tuesdays (if you can have a favorite part) is the visits from the therapy dogs. Andrea brings Alfred and Ernie in to get pets from the patients and anyone in the waiting room. Ernie and I have become good friends because I’ve ended up seeing him the most. A third dog, Fritz, is going to be joining the rotation, but I’m not sure I’ll get to meet him.
This week is Dad’s last chemo treatment on the schedule. He’ll get a PET scan and then we’ll go from there.
I really hope that the cancer is dead, done, and dealt with. I hope this is our last Chemo Tuesday.
But a little part of me will also miss the Tuesday waiting room crowd.
Especially the dogs.
Writing Confidence (I Don’t Have Any Lately)
There was a time in my writing life when I thought I was pretty hot shit.
Okay, maybe that’s something of an exaggeration. I’ve never quite been so keen on myself. But there was definitely a good stretch where I felt solidly competent in my writing work.
I miss those days.
I think that stretch I spent in which writing was hard did more damage than I’d like to admit. When I was writing easy and often, I felt good about what I was putting onto paper. I felt like it was worth reading, even if not too many people wanted to read it.
When I hit that skid, though, I tripped harder than I thought. I’ve recovered when it comes to ideas and the writing being easier, but I think I lost some confidence along the way. I have no real faith in anything I’ve been writing lately. It’s not that I don’t like it or that I don’t enjoy the process, but once that draft is done, I’m at a loss. As much as I enjoy what I wrote, I don’t think it’s good enough for anyone else to enjoy.
Rejection is a natural part of writing, and there was a time when I was getting rejected regularly because I was submitting regularly. When I hit that dry period, the submitting also hit drought mode. When it came time to get back in the game, I found that I really had no game left. Not for lack of trying, either. I subscribed to my writing magazines again, started trolling for places to submit, even submitted a few things, but for the most part, I’ve felt out of my element. I lost my mojo, and I lost my place.
It’s a little bit demoralizing to be honest.
I’ve been working on the novel length version of Stateline for months now, unable to make a whole lot of progress quickly due to the current stress test that is my life. As I’ve progressed through the story, I realize that it’s not exactly what I envisioned, but then again, I’m not entirely surprised by that because I didn’t exactly do the greatest outlining/planning. I jotted down my main beats, but there were a lot of words that needed to fill in the blank spaces between those beats. This isn’t unfamiliar territory for me. I’ve done this before. And there have been moments where I’ve really enjoyed the story I’ve been writing. A line here, a turn of phrase there, a conversation, an interaction. I’m having a good time writing this story even if it is meandering and destined to be in need of much revising.
But too much of it strikes me as a regression of my craft. There are times when I’m writing it that I wonder why I’m writing it because I’ve clearly lost some of my skill. I used to think that writing poetry would help to keep my prose sharp, but it seems like this blade is forever dull.
I keep thinking that I’ll get my confidence back as I go along. After all, I’m going to keep writing. That’s not going to stop.
I guess I don’t know what this means right now.
Look at that. I don’t even have confidence in this blog post.
Hey, Man, Let Me Catch You Up
I’m not one of those people who puts everything on the internet. Hell, I’m not one of those people that puts everything out in my meat space. I have been conditioned to only discuss my existence in the most general of terms because no one really has the attention span for much more. It doesn’t occur to me to say more, even when I probably should say more.
So here’s what I haven’t been saying since October 1st of 2024.
From October 1st until December 31st, between my dad and my roommate Carrie, there were-
- 10 ER visits
- 5 hospitalizations
- 3 911 calls
- 2 surgeries
- 1 death
During this time period my dad was diagnosed with lung cancer (good prognosis with treatment), congestive heart failure, and COPD; I lost count of all of the doctor’s appointments; a long time bestie was also diagnosed with breast cancer, had a double mastectomy, and had new boobs planted (good prognosis there, too); and my dad’s first chemo treatment happened just days after Carrie died. I also had my own visit to the doctor for a med check and was given a second blood pressure medicine because the only other alternative was to lower my stress, and baby, that ain’t happening. There’s probably a bunch of other stuff that happened during that time, but I can’t immediately recall it.
Since this time period, there’s been another hospitalization, a change in my dad’s chemo schedule from every three weeks to weekly, and I don’t know how many medication changes.
In the past month, I’ve played catch up with a couple of people I haven’t talked to for a while. They asked me what’s been going on in my life, and I honestly didn’t know how to answer that question. How do you answer that question when a great bit of your life for the past 8 or 9 months has been this? It’s not the cheery catch up people expect, that’s for sure. When I have talked about it, the people on the receiving end have been kind and empathetic and supportive. I’ve received many offers of help if I need it, which I appreciate, even though I’ll never let myself accept it. But I haven’t talked about it much because I struggle with exactly what to say.
I also kinda don’t want to talk about it. Standing hips deep in the swamp, I’d rather not discuss it, I guess. While I’m getting better about talking about what’s going on with my dad, I’m still not ready to talk about Carrie’s death.
People talk about processing things. I honestly have no idea what that means or how to do it. Right now I’m just going from one thing to the next. One appointment to the next. One task to the next. One responsibility to the next. I’m in the now, experiencing things as they happen, and dealing with them as they come. I have no idea what to do beyond that, but I guess I’ll figure it out. At this point, I’m kinda hoping I’m processing as I go and don’t realize it.
I’m still working on how to condense all of this into an easily digestible, quick answer for the next time I have to catch someone up.
Maybe I can just direct them to this post.
Poem–“Mating Ritual”
It’s the last day of National Poetry Month! You made it! The torture is over!
With this last poem.
The final poem featured from the November Poem-a-Day Challenge comes from the theme Disguise. I admit to playing fast and loose with this theme, but you have to admit that my free verse isn’t wrong.
Mating Ritual
I pluck hairs
from my face
to hide that
I’m a mammal.
Men don’t date
within their species.
Kiki Writes About... 