A Dentist's Chair

http://writeonedge.com/ prompt: This week, with Labor Day and the end of summer rapidly approaching, we asked you to write about a season of change for your character or you. It can be literal or metaphorical.

"A Dentist’s Chair"

It, my life, is sort of like being at the dentist.  Anticipation fills me up like a balloon on the brink of popping.  I am utterly freaked out by the familiar smell of a dentist office, the length of the needle, and the sound of the drill. Hesitantly, sometimes even haphazardly, I willingly place myself in the chair and lie back  - hoping, praying that this visit go better than the last one I have tightly stored in the right hemisphere of my brain.  I place a slanted, but closed, tight smile on my face and listen to the doctor.  I watch her come a little closer.  My body jerks.  The slightest touch of latex-free rubber on my upper lip sends my blood racing through my veins and heading toward my heart.  I’m shaken, frightened, think I may even breathe my last breath in this cold, ugly, blue leather lounger.  But, I put on a brave face.  (My bulging brown eyes might seal the deal for a Razzie award nomination.)

 I’m being poked, prodded and numbed.

What is going to happen next? 

What do I want to happen?

What am I waiting for, exactly?

Perhaps I don’t know what I’m waiting for.  Or what I’ve been waiting for isn’t showing up, so it’s the empty expectations I project that fill me up with ramped emotions, and I wish I could condition myself to let things be. I’m a grown woman. I can handle this! 

Little by little, my big girl panties start making an appearance, until I hear:

“Okay, Mary Jane, you’re all set.  We’ll see you in two weeks” 

What!  I have to go through this experience again?

I have to feel anxious, nervous, and wait for what is expected, but doesn’t always present itself.  What, again, is the expected? 

I am so frustrated for feeling these emotions in the first place.  I have to have a confused sense of trying myself at bravery and being a coward at the same time.  This is my life and I’ll feel this way when I want to.  Two weeks is just too soon.  But sometimes, time isn’t on our side. And sometimes, even though the novocaine wears off, I still have days that leave me numb. Sometimes.

Until the next time…

Peace and love - MJ

Poem: A Moment She'll Never Get Back

A Moment She’ll Never Get Back

He waited at the end of
narrow aisle
atop of the

Altar. Black tuxedo,
crisp white shirt,
and bowtie, crooked like his

Personality. She in pure silk,
hand sewn and adorned by
a human hand, waited
behind thick oak doors

in the church corridor.
A blast of air from the doors
swinging open sent her veil
into her face.  Incense and the fragrance of
Tiger Lillies swept through,
up her nostrils that were tucked behind
a layer of tulle.  Her father

next to her, raised his arm
elbow pointed – her cue
to lock her flowerless hand
around his wrist. Music,

Eyes and flashes, whispers
attacked the girl, each step
closer appearing longer in time,

shorter in distance. Enough
time to convince herself.

Mary Jane Mircovich - 2010

Poem: An Ode to Joe

Joe

It isn’t the early morning sound
Annoyingly invading my ear
That causes my body to ascend.

No. It is my mind’s addiction.
Its need
That lifts me from seven hours of rest.

Eyes open,
Thoughts scattering for a few moments
Until they firmly fix themselves onto one element,
Reciting its divine name in my head.

Haphazardly,
I stumble though the hall,
Into the so-called woman’s place in a home. 

There, in silence,
My movement becomes automatic – like a robot,
Systematic.

Indonesia. Columbia. Brazil. Hawaii.
I suppose I should be grateful to all

Start – the green light illuminates.

Done – three steady beeps go off.

Yes.

Columbia.

My gratefulness rests, in great, 

To those select few
Who mistakenly founded my mind’s habit
eons ago in Ethiopia. 

My morning jolt of perfection is indebted to those.

Mary Jane Mircovich - 2010

My Favorite Poem

Here is a powerful poem I think we can all relate to in some way or another...past, present and maybe even future.

Peace and Love - MJ 

Please Hear What I'm Not Saying

Don't be fooled by me.
Don't be fooled by the face I wear
for I wear a mask, a thousand masks,
masks that I'm afraid to take off,
and none of them is me.

Pretending is an art that's second nature with me,
but don't be fooled,
for God's sake don't be fooled.
I give you the impression that I'm secure,
that all is sunny and unruffled with me, within as well
as without,
that confidence is my name and coolness my game,
that the water's calm and I'm in command
and that I need no one,
but don't believe me.
My surface may seem smooth but my surface is my mask,
ever-varying and ever-concealing.
Beneath lies no complacence.
Beneath lies confusion, and fear, and aloneness.
But I hide this. I don't want anybody to know it.
I panic at the thought of my weakness exposed.
That's why I frantically create a mask to hide behind,
a nonchalant sophisticated facade,
to help me pretend,
to shield me from the glance that knows.

But such a glance is precisely my salvation, my only hope,
and I know it.
That is, if it's followed by acceptance,
if it's followed by love.
It's the only thing that can liberate me from myself,
from my own self-built prison walls,
from the barriers I so painstakingly erect.
It's the only thing that will assure me
of what I can't assure myself,
that I'm really worth something.
But I don't tell you this. I don't dare to, I'm afraid to.
I'm afraid your glance will not be followed by acceptance,
will not be followed by love.
I'm afraid you'll think less of me,
that you'll laugh, and your laugh would kill me.
I'm afraid that deep-down I'm nothing
and that you will see this and reject me.

So I play my game, my desperate pretending game,
with a facade of assurance without
and a trembling child within.
So begins the glittering but empty parade of masks,
and my life becomes a front.
I idly chatter to you in the suave tones of surface talk.
I tell you everything that's really nothing,
and nothing of what's everything,
of what's crying within me.
So when I'm going through my routine
do not be fooled by what I'm saying.
Please listen carefully and try to hear what I'm not saying,
what I'd like to be able to say,
what for survival I need to say,
but what I can't say.

I don't like hiding.
I don't like playing superficial phony games.
I want to stop playing them.
I want to be genuine and spontaneous and me
but you've got to help me.
You've got to hold out your hand
even when that's the last thing I seem to want.
Only you can wipe away from my eyes
the blank stare of the breathing dead.
Only you can call me into aliveness.
Each time you're kind, and gentle, and encouraging,
each time you try to understand because you really care,
my heart begins to grow wings--
very small wings,
very feeble wings,
but wings!

With your power to touch me into feeling
you can breathe life into me.
I want you to know that.
I want you to know how important you are to me,
how you can be a creator--an honest-to-God creator--
of the person that is me
if you choose to.
You alone can break down the wall behind which I tremble,
you alone can remove my mask,
you alone can release me from my shadow-world of panic,
from my lonely prison,
if you choose to.
Please choose to.

Do not pass me by.
It will not be easy for you.
A long conviction of worthlessness builds strong walls.
The nearer you approach to me
the blinder I may strike back.
It's irrational, but despite what the books say about man
often I am irrational.
I fight against the very thing I cry out for.
But I am told that love is stronger than strong walls
and in this lies my hope.
Please try to beat down those walls
with firm hands but with gentle hands
for a child is very sensitive.

Who am I, you may wonder?
I am someone you know very well.
For I am every man you meet
and I am every woman you meet.

Charles C. Finn
September 1966