by DEY RIVERS

Fid Thompson, *re/cover,* linocut on pharmaceutical medication guide paper, 9.5 x 6 inches, 2022. Courtesy of the artist.

Crisis In Perfect Weather

DEY RIVERS| MAY 2023 | Issue 23

We wish for afterwards…after the sick feeling in the pit of our stomach has gone away. We slip into pretending we are alright. We forgot “Be yourself, love.” Our throat tightens and moisture prickles behind our tired eyes, in the dilemma of feeling. One feeling. A ball under our brown-black skin to the right of our ribs, lodged and pulsing with a cry for attention we do not want to give. A sticky blanket of despair laid over our pockets of hope and confidence. Deep in dusty corners hid the detritus of the second-guess we shoved aside so we could put our head down to survive. Doubt rears up. An encroaching gloom, casting a pallor over the good and the new and the reclaimed. We fill the four rust orange walls, bent roof of our space with jasmine smoke determined to be alright. Yet, under our ribs that knot does not release its hold. We cling to the knowledge it will eventually pass, when we can move without self-doubt irritating our marrow.

When did self-doubt start?

A lot of great things all happening at once. We don’t know how to handle abundance. No one taught us how to receive and contain the amassing good in our body. We run scared.

Our limbs plead for sleep, our jaw clenches. Fullness feels strange as if we will burst and lose ourselves. Who are we without struggle?

Return to yourself

Where did we go?

Into the recesses of before

What is “the Before”?

Let’s peer into the ties and threads which led us here.

Out here in the field under the elements assailing us, we work. We work and are not filled. We work and bend and work and estrange our muscles and lose our bones, our skin and are not filled. We see day by day the sunup, the sundown and cannot rest, are forced to not rest and are not filled. We stifle vibrations of our laughter by running away or sticking our head in a barrel, quiet the strength of our voice, dampen our wails and sobs, and are not filled.

We carry this with us.

We move and move and work and work and gain learning and accolades and bleed ourselves and are not filled. We cultivate veins of steel and nerves of ice, bones of hard wood and cut out sensitive, cut out softness. We build layer after hardened layer around what we think we deserve, and what is our worth. We give and give and give and ignore our desires in all the giving and are not filled. Are not filled. We try bending with different faces and hair, and push the hurt down into the pelvic floor, down into the cervix and ovaries and testes to carry on, down into the pancreas, liver, kidneys, and small and large intestines. We hold our breath against the pain in our blood. Until it seizes our hearts over and over.

And are not filled.

We seek that which is outside of ourselves for validation instead of what resides within our diaphragm under the sternum, encased in our skull, woven between our shoulder blades, our legs. We rage. We wallow and obsess on things we’ve done and place the blame solely on ourselves. Our ears turn deaf to compliments, our eyes blind to support, for under those layers we built there is no room for such vulnerabilities. We are not filled.

This is the Before.

After all this we remember…

to dance in moon shimmer of our ingenuity

even as we toss and turn and groan and

complain and beat ourselves with shame

testing the waters of a self shoved aside

come forward tentatively, cautiously, bit by bit

ready to shrink away, shrink away

we begin to fill

We learning

to accept tenderness and when we need to be held

to rest and embrace our salty tears

floodgates open

uncovering pearls of our protected imaginings

strung together notes loosen in our throats

express anger and hurt

we begin to fill

When fear grips us…

we retreat

distrust care in almost all its forms

at the first hint of rejection

we shut down

spend days rolling in worry and silence

cling to phantoms of what we thought we knew

pick and reopen insidious and harmful wounds

wiggle into what we think is the easy way out

and yet, say “yes, a little help will be nice”

we begin to fill

We are content in…

NO

naming that which we desire

thrive in platonic

dare to let everything be free

dive into shocking cold rivers

hold ourselves naked

Spread eagle in sunshine

laughing uproariously

we begin to feel

We forget we. We miss we. We find we. We cry with we.

In late spirit hours we come to truth. We are whole.

Dey Rivers is a non-binary Black american navigating mental health challenges, playing in fictional worlds and poetry, painting and collective dreaming where they reside on stolen land. Their work is based on Sankofa, in conversation with the past and present to imagine futures. They have an educational background in Fine Arts and mental health advocacy, and were selected for the 2020 Ooligan Press Writers of Color Showcase. Dey is currently revising a queer historical novel.

Fid Thompson is an artist, writer, gardener, wonderer, queer white human who grew up in rural England. Her art is informed by her bi-cultural family and the humans, cultures, creatures, plants, and landscapes of the places where she has lived. Her work inquires into inner and outer worlds and weathers, nature, mental health cycles, and portraiture of all the kinds. Fid has twice been a recipient of the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities’ Fellowship, including for her Queer Enough portrait project, and is a 2023 grantee of the Washington Project for the Arts's Wherewithal grant. She is currently writing about worms, among other things.