New Clear Vision

I Am What I Am…

by Mary Sojourner

I walk east, away from the last light of the shortest day. The edge of the circling earth covered the sun a little earlier. I walk on Winters Road next to a ribbon of gleaming snow-melt in the High Mojave Desert. The colors of clouds and snow-melt shift: lilac to rose, rose to red-gold, red-gold to pink, pink to turquoise, turquoise to ice blue.

I let the colors fill my mind. There is barely enough room for them. I’m in a new level of my addiction recovery and withdrawal. I’m terrified ninety-five per cent of the time. Thoughts rattle. “What if? What if? What if?” The past and present jam up in the now that we are told so blithely to occupy.

Suddenly, I think not of colors or terror or the way a barbed wire ribbon of past and present has been streaming through my brain. I think of J., the gentle super-market bagger. He is a short middle-aged man, his hair faded rust. He wears thick glasses and he often talks himself through packing the groceries. “Good, that fits right there. Not the apples next to the onions. Too heavy, take out the milk.” (more…)