Yeah, I was an iron lung for eleven days the first time (polio) and four days the second time (what used to be called double lobar pneumonia, a complication). I hadn't turned seven yet and the memory of lying there hating everything, everybody and deciding that there was no Big Kindly God, is vivid and ineradicable. I basically got out physically functional out of pure spite.
I can't even imagine dealing with it for years. But the emotional investment that's going to take, if you're to do it honestly, is going to burn.
It's not a novel in my head. It's an action movie. Here goes:
Kit ran her finger lightly along John's neck as he slept. She tried to concentrate, to immerse herself in him to the exclusion of all else, but nothing was working. If he wasn't awake, demanding her attention, if they weren't fighting (oh, how marvelous a team they made) or fucking (better yet), she was still alone.
She could keep using John to drown out Mark, and John certainly wasn't complaining. But Mark didn't need drowning out, or forgetting, or ignoring. Adrenaline intoxication was all well and good, but it was no way to mourn a lost husband.
"John. Wake up."
But the emotional investment that's going to take, if you're to do it honestly, is going to burn.
Oh yes. Scares the living crap out of me, to tell you the truth. The level of trauma it caused his family, too...hard for everyone to talk about it. I know my father wrote a short story about visiting his father in the iron lung. I remember he tried to show it to me when I was too young to get it, and I think my confused response turned him off from ever wanting to show it to me again. I hope I can change his mind.
Polio is an evil, evil disease.
He had fought in WWII, was gone for years while my Gram raised four kids. Came home, contracted polio a couple of years later. Was paralyzed from neck down the rest of his life.
My dad lost most of the muscle mass on his legs permenently from the evil illness, but he never talks about it. Never talks much about his childhood, actually. I have a lot of poems about that.
Anyway, because of the trauma surrounding this topic, I'm wary about starting it now. But everyone do me a favor? Now and then, every few months or so, could someone remind me about it? Even if I don't start actively working on it for a while, I want to keep it perculating.
Hey--at some point, could we maybe have poetry "drabbles" as well (100 word max would likely still work)? I'd love a chance to share poetry along with the short narrative pieces we've been doing.
ita, I'm with Deb. Excellent!
I'll remind you. I got off very lightly indeed from the polio - no real lung damage and a very mild compression on the left side of my body, the result of which was seven years of dance as "therapy", and which keeps me from tilting these days, although once in a while my posture slips badly and then the right, longer, side of my pelvis rotates forward and wham, back into PT. Getting it as an adult boggles me.
And I would love a poetry drabble.
Looking at Steph's description, every drabble is a poetry drabble:
With that in mind, this community is just random drabbles. Non-fandom, non-genre, no specific style. Prose, poetry, essay, dialogue only -- anything goes.
Thanks, guys. I have no idea if the rest of that story will ever leave my head, but it's fun in there.
I'll remind you.
Oh yes, I remember. I hope I didn't come off as lecturing about the nature of polio. I was more just pondering its effect on my dad's side of the family. To say it was profound would be a vast understatement.
Annnyway. Enough about me and mine.
Can we maybe link the drabble topic so that we can submit a narrative piece or a poem along that theme?
ETA: Oops! Thanks ita. I came into this late and hadn't seen that.
I've not written poetry for anybody else's eyes since high school...it's the Music of Pain for me...I do it in private when life really sucks.
Shy about that...yikes.
No pressure, though, erika. If we go by Steph's description (as ita kindly directed me to), then you would never have to submit a poem.
They can be sources of enormous vulnerability, no doubt.
