This collection of collages was created during a hospital stay in which each part wrote a poem and each poem was accompanied by torn out words, phrases, and images from magazines. The process of making the collages was enlightening, healing, and a sort of escape from the anxiety caused by weeks in a hospital setting.
Above Ground
By Fern:
I am a seed in the dirt
before the sun, the dark comes first.
I curl up like a bear,
until it is time to breathe the air.
The Swimming Pool
By Elsie:
I wanted to be cold because the sun was burning and so was my skin.
So I put on sunscreen.
I’m not sure when to reapply so I do it every 45 minutes.
But now is the moment. On the edge of the deep end.
Three, two one. I’m flying.
For half a second before the bottom of my feet make contact with the water.
A splash somewhere in between the drop of a stone and the cannonball of a boulder.
But the water is not cold enough to relieve the burning of my legs and arms.
From my brain to my heart.
So I get out and jump again. And I am still hot.
So I get in a jump. And jump and jump until I get to seven times.
And when I get out again I wrap the towel around my shoulders even though I am still hot.
And I walk away from the water because what else should I do?
The Box
By Quinn:
I worry that I take up too much space. So I live in the box.
“Can I ask you something?”
Then I fold my arms and legs into a paper airplane.
To live in a smaller box.
“Can you help me with this please?”
Then I crumple the paper plane like a discarded piece of trash.
And I live in a smaller box.
“I am feeling scared and too big.”
Then I ignite the balled up trash and sprinkle the ashes in a smaller box.
And I am living in an even smaller box.
Arms encircling my legs.
The box rocks back and forth.
Hopefully I don’t fall over and spill out.
Because in my box and with my eyes closed I am basically invisible.
The Woods
By Max:
The path in the coniferous forest is dirt. And it is covered in pine needles so every step is softened.
I am like an owl, it’s moth-like flight feathers, quiet and fast.
I am a silent observer and I am comforted by the tree tunnels
holding me in their arms as the wind gently pushes me through, urging me forward step by quiet step.
The woods are community.
But there is also a sense of solitude.
I am not sure if it is coming from within or without.
Some of the trees have branches that touch their neighbors in a hand hold.
They can’t feel solitary. Or can they?
I slide down a smooth tree trunk and breathe.
Breathe in and listen.
And listen and feel.
Feel and exist.
Exist and be.
Snake
By Emma:
Through the misty tunnels now I crawl
sticks and bones snap to fill the hollow
no matter all the air I gulp and swallow
on my stomach slither, still I fall.
Oh tell me what to do to change my fate
Or is it all predetermined will?
I hear my breathing slow and almost still
I hope the angels find me not the snake.
Wrapped in God’s embrace I do recall
a lullaby so quiet from the birds
I closed my eyes and almost never heard
the song that fell and calmed into a lull.
The pain, the hurt, the sorry and the love
makes the path ahead too hard to follow
cold blood, reptile scales I hope tomorrow
I’ll find the reason why,
the why? Because.
Association
By Avery:
If I know you through association then I don’t really know you.
And you shouldn’t take offense because I know myself through association too.
And I don’t know myself. So it all makes sense.
Unless none of it does.
Because association might be delusion and delusion might be real.
And what’s real might be a story, which might be fiction.
And fiction might be fantasy or it might be burning pancakes.
And burning pancakes requires heat and heat comes from fire and fire comes from a body ignited in gasoline and the strike of a match.
Or maybe not.
Heat also comes from friction and friction comes from empty spaces and the empty spaces are synapses and the synapses are graves.
Or maybe not.
Graves contain what’s known and what’s known is sometimes only known by the one who dug the hole.
Or by everybody huddled around watching it be dug.
And everybody is watching me and I am watching them and they are one step ahead in the footprints and the footprints are mine.
Or maybe not.
Pushing The Pedal
By Scout:
When my eyes drift shut, I am transported into the passenger seat of a speeding vehicle.
Blurred periphery and tangles of color.
I try to crawl over, to take control, but the car collides with something invisible and I fly through the windshield in a cyclone of glass and blood and flesh.
When my eyes drift shut, I am transported into the driver’s seat of a vehicle hurtling toward oblivion.
Wild, careening turns and snaking passage.
I press the pedal and nothing.
I press the pedal and it disappears.
I press through the air where the pedal used to be and my foot plummets through a hole.
The hole is my mouth.
Frozen in a scream.
That doesn’t make a sound.
Happy
By Audrey:
Happiness is not letting the sadness take anything else away.
The Inbetween
By Wren:
The door is rattling against its frame like a mischief of tap dancing mice in the walls.
And the light settings are dim, so that seeing the words on the page is nearly impossible.
Or the lights are blinding like looking up at the sun in anticipation of an eclipse, spots dancing in your eyes like the spots on our sun.
In totality, there is too much.
Too much light.
Or too much darkness.
I am not searching for one or the other, I’m just searching for the middle.
For the inbetween.
But I know the inbetween.
And I don’t always want to feel as though I’m in it.
It’s the place between the ground and space, but not sky.
The place between anguish and delight, but not “I’m fine.”
The place between love and hate, but not ambivalence.
Because if I can love others, surely I can love myself.
But sometimes I am in between the others.
In between the footsteps and the mouth, but not in the words.
I can reach out with my own words to yours, wrapping themselves around each other in an unbreakable chain.
And they can be in between. And we can too.
Between knowing and not.
In the inbetween we can exist.
And really, it’s not a bad place to be.
The Sequence
By Stevie
1 Chaos.
1 Brewing.
2 Lighting strikes.
3 Sky split open
5 And we have to weave
8 with spider silk, the hole back together before
13 it gets any bigger and swallows us whole like a whale gulping plankton.
1 So
1 I
2 count every
3 stitch that brings
5 safety by closing the seam.
8 And when the numbers in the sequence grow,
13 I sometimes start over, repeating the pattern, numbers looping in the brain until
1 Chaos.
1 Brewing.
2 Lightning strikes.
Threads of Glass
By Jo:
Threads are vessels and vessels are branches, branches are fractals, and fractals are roots.
What if the threads are crystal clear glass and the glass is a barrier all things to prove?
How does it shatter and how does it fall?
Minuscule sand or mosaic-like edges?
hot tempered then cooled by the threads of the sun,
floats to the floor in the future it wedges.
Threads are vessels and vessels are branches, branches are fractals and fractals are glass.
Entwined with each strand, my hands they remember the motions required for gold, silver, brass.
Vessels they carry, what’s carried is stored, what’s stored is remembered and memories stay,
In the hearts of the loved through the blood like a story, never to shatter, glass misted by rain.