Rebecca Cook

The things we discover about ourselves. I will be 60 November 15th, but it is at this late point in my long long therapy journey that I am beginning to accept.. to realize yes.. but to also accept the fact that I am so hard on myself. All of the time. I drive myself just as relentlessly as if my mother were still in the house with me as if she were still living and could call me on the phone…

If I had known how difficult it would be to live as a bipolar person, to keep myself grounded, to keep myself inside the white lines going down the road that I'm living on, I would not have had children. When my keel is even and I am able to interact with people pleasantly, it's not so bad. But this morning I found myself practically yelling at my poor son, my autistic adult child, who had just awakened. I started ragging…

i drove us backroads-all-the-way down to the farm. such lovely places spaces views what an enormous and glorious country. what a pleasant time with my father. and my brother who i was not expecting. i rewrote/updated an old essay for my father and i read it aloud to him. he did not know that this is what i do. he did not remember that my brother and i played the hell out of the old piano Patches had given us. he…

I fear the future. Not afraid exactly, but very aware that things are shifting. I am 59. My mother died at 59, a little less than 2 months before her 60th birthday. I am well, other than all my ailments which seem to increase and then to ebb just a bit before increasing again. I want to change my health, if I can. I want to make the most of.....or is this true? Do I want to "make the most of…

this brain is full of glitches matted trees doorstops inside my wrists this brain gallops the length of this body corridors open windows massive doorknobs this giant yellow house these pink roller skates my mother’s twister boards this brain goes for a swim in the pool in the chest the brilliant clean blue god is there it thunders this pool becomes an ocean this god becomes a kitchen mouse a pocket watch my grandfather’s hairy hands lift it up my brain…

look! the stars were here. their black holes, their empty watering places. the memory of light. they swam these dark channels, they gathered up the coals and cast them down to god. their dragon breath, their dragon heads bowed everything burning everything turning redder as each flower of morning pulls the night over its head.

There was a church under the church under the stones under my granddaddy's pew there was a dark mouth a narrow stairwell a hungry maw. The was a church situated exactly on top of the church I could look up during the prayer and see it hovering a chicken-wire parade float outfitted with Angel wings. There was a church inside the church inside the hearts of the congregation the baptized heads the earnest-in- prayer claspings of hands I wriggled inside this…

In my most recent inventory I found that I cannot wear the new boots, the beautiful things are useless to me. I cannot wear the new blazer, the sleeves are a disaster, the bickering ladies have ruined my flowy black pants the pockets having shrunk up suitable only for finger babies. Here is the blue cardy and here is the pink cardy and here are the eight-thousand eight hundred and twenty-two babies, babies large and babies small enough for match boxes…

I am ensconced I am cottoned-up I am a smooth blue rock. I am hiding in some places where monsters can't see me. It's raining. Perhaps I should clarify perhaps I have come to the world’s end a long valley with nothing in it I am safe, I am beyond God’s reach. Perhaps I should tell you that I am no criminal I am no snitch I am loyal to a fault but I cannot sleep at night I cannot hold…

"Please, little one, take the first pat of butter and the first spoon of jam. Take the finest pair of slippers and the very largest clot of cream. Take up the choicest grasses and the clearest water to keep for yourself. And the dandelions. And the runt of every litter. Take down the farthest star and pop it into your mouth every night. When morning comes, I will fly into your room and place a living coal on your tongue and…