some observations on my feelings

some observations on my feelings

sometimes when I don’t want my feelings I send them away 
to live in my back, my shoulder, my neck, my knee

and then I hold my breath hoping to kill them silently 
while they are locked away

and while I am sitting there very still,
trying to murder my feelings 

I am growing more and more detached -- 

not detached like a Bodhisattva,
detached like a retina,

not that I see more but that I see less.

A dark mist begins to fill my field of vision and even though 
I’m sitting still, I can find no rest.

Then if I’m lucky I’ll realize, after a while, 
that as I am smothering my feelings 
I am smothering myself too, 

(you can say this is not news,
but I bet you sometimes do it too)

and then I take a breath, a big breath, like I’ve just been born.

I give my feelings some air, I let them out of jail, I let them move me,
they move me to dance, and the more I dance 

the better I see

***

other times my feelings are so large
they can’t be locked up and at those times it is the feelings themselves 
that cloud my vision, not their lack

these feelings cannot be bound up against their will

they dance in the sky inside my head, like dragons
they shriek and burn

for these feelings I must drink fire,
bathe in ice

for these feelings I must hold myself down, or be held.

I can’t dance to them, and if I tried, I would dance off the edge of the world.

***

If you ask me but aren’t they all the same feelings?

Well, I don’t know. 

If they are all the same feelings I don’t know why they are different.

Maybe the difference between them is 
whether they’ve gone mad from confinement 
or grown sane from enduring it

or maybe whether they escaped or were set free



-- Amy Isikoff Newell, August 13, 2022