Love Song to the Embodied World

As I write to you, I feel the slips of hair that fall around me these days, itching my arms and shoulders. Sometimes it's handfuls. When I wash my hair, the tile of my shower wall is covered with the brown fur of my shedding hair - what I collect so it doesn't clog the drain.

Losing my hair is one of the latest of my symptoms that come and go. I've cried for my hair, even as I looked up helpful supplements on the internet and as my doctor why he thinks it's falling out. I like to think that I'll be writing a year from now, telling you about the fuzz of new hair that's thickening out my head. But I don't know.

And so I sit, and wait, and be with the unknown of why and the known of losing hair.

Humility is a companion of illness. So is unknowing. So much is out of my control.

And yet there are parts of me who will insist that I do have control and that I should be doing better. These parts came to speak in this poem, along with another part, perhaps my wisest self, who said, I don't want to be her.... and so the poem.

Love Song to the Embodied World by Karly Randolph Pitman

There's a me inside who follows all the rules.
She stays calm in suffering and remembers
to take every pill. This me never eats the food
that flares her symptoms or snaps at herself.
She aces sickness, rising above the stress
with smiling ease. But this me isn't real.
She only lives within the air of my mind.
She doesn't live inside skin, with pain that hurts
and fear that scares. I can never do it all, or well.
I know this. But this me will crucify my failure
to float above this human flesh. I surprise myself
when I realize – I don't want to be her. I want
to descend to this rare earth, to live within
the marrow of overdue bills and the time of enough.
I want to live beside the list of all I should be doing,
knowing I'll fail and that this will be okay. I breathe
real oxygen, not imagined glory. I breathe out, exhale,
sing my holy sonnet to the embodied world.

O Nobly Born is a reader supported newsletter. If you appreciate receiving the poems of O Nobly Born, you can subscribe to the newsletter by clicking on the red button below, make a $10 donation here by credit card or a donation of any amount through paypal at paypal@growinghumankindness.com. I cherish every donation, as they support this work and enable me to offer these poems freely to all.

With a grateful heart, Karly