On Wednesday, February 17, Writers for Recovery was honored to read as part of Vermont’s annual Recovery Day. This year’s event was held online, but it still managed to showcase all the hard work, love, and community that characterizes the recovery movement in Vermont. We are grateful to Peter Espenshade, Danielle Sessler, and all the other folks at the Recovery Vermont, without whom this amazing event wouldn’t have been possible.
This year, four of our amazing writers shared their work with the Recovery Day audience. Please enjoy these wonderful pieces!
When You Said That
by Ashlee Loyer
When you said that,
Did you know how it would affect me?
Did you know how angry, how sad, how confused you would make me?
When you said that
Did you know you would validate so many things?
Did you know so many negative thoughts and feelings would truly lock into place?
When you said that
Did you know that it suddenly made sense that I was an outcast, genuinely the black sheep?
Did you know it would make me question everything about my life and question how much of it was a lie?
When you said that
Did you think at all about me? I was only 17.
Did you think at all about the emotional repercussions could be?
When you said that
I shattered into a million pieces. Did it make you feel better?
I was never the same after that moment. Did you know you tore out a piece of me?
When you said that
Did you know I would use drugs and alcohol to cope with the emotions I was feeling?
Did you know that I would be swallowed into a world that I never wanted to be in and almost didn’t make it out of alive?
Did you know it would destroy so much of my life?
When you said that
You changed my life
Shattered my being
And I have yet to return.
Did you think of me at all
When you said that?
The Lilacs Were Starting to Bloom
by Johny Widell
The lilacs were starting
to bloom, and that meant we were
fully into Spring.
In a few weeks, we'd be planting the garden.
The apple blossoms would come out any day
and the orchard behind the house would become
a sea of white.
In no time
white petals would fly
and soon
corn would be high and green.
Soon
leaves would begin to change and apples
(did I ever see them green?)
would be red and yellow ripe and falling from the trees.
The leaves,
the leaves red and orange and yellow flying on the breeze.
I would feel that first breath of winter,
shortened days, the smell of chill
on the night air,
bitter cold and snow blowing
against my face and neck,
all the branches except a scattering of
golden leaved oaks,
turned to sticks,
gray sticks
cold against the gray white sky.
Now I see these first blooms of lilacs,
soft purple in a vase on the altar
with deep purple tulips
behind the names of the dead.
Walking Around Rutland Through Falling Snow
by Johny Widell
I see folks smoking in front of
The recovery center
The strange beauty of snow falling through
Big puffs of smoke.
Behind what used to be the Dream Center,
Virginia, my friend who works in the opioid epidemic,
Whose son died in the opioid epidemic,
Scattering salt from a small Morton container
Onto the thick ice.
Through the heavy snow,
I see broken windows,
Bare boards where all the paint has worn away
No trespassing signs
Some handwritten with dire warnings
A laundromat, another laundromat, another laundromat,
That one closed for good.
Houses here and there freshly mended
Freshly painted.
A mom pulling her child on a sled,
Both giggling through heavy snowfall.
Across from the old abandoned Methodist church,
There is a house where last spring
I had several chats
With a friendly guy who told me,
While quickly downing his morning tall boy,
About the drug dealers upstairs,
The semi-trucks full of merchandise.
Now the whole place is boarded up.
Across the street, a large plate glass
Window completely filled with
A colorful tapestry of a seated Buddha.
I hadn't even seen it until Busshin pointed it out.
Even then, I looked right at it for a while before I finally spotted it.
Now, it is enormous, surreal, bright
in this neighborhood of white and colorless houses,
All of it filtered through the hoard of lovely snowflakes
Descending softly from the sky.
That Wasn’t the End of It
by Nelly W.
It began with the taxi cab driver rolling me, or maybe before that because I hadn’t eaten for a while-- so excited about seeing you!
and it may have only been toward the middle when I was propositioning you and you were talking to lace-sleeved girls, telling you that you had prior claims on my body or heart,
but slurring lyrics instead and leaning in, mad, angry, and incomprehensible--invading your space. The lace long sleeve see-through shirts, and trying to get out of my bar bill as the music ended, and did I fall to the floor serving a platter of petit fours? And I laughed and said, “a Bosnian-Canadian Bar-be-que? I don’t want to eat any nationalities” and I remember how the band was relying on me to be charming,
all commands at my dance,
and it was Nuit Blanche a festival of White Nights and outdoor art installations, all for me,
and all the transportation was free so I should not have taken that cab ride and that circumnavigated town and I was wearing the sequence union flag almost spice girls dress with red Mary Janes
and my sister was really worried because the whole next day I may have eaten two tiny squares of a chocolate bar because to see you, I never needed any food and I looked so good and you could see me on the dance floor making the scene and everybody wanted to be me, and I looked good
and I was on others’ Facebook feeds
and it was not even clear if I was a female impersonator because I was thin and tall and sexy and hot and so so effed.
At the Dark Horse the next day, near the metal horse sculpture, you still wanted me to tell me about your movie
even after it all, the next day
still valued my heat-mad-wet and resplendent brain.
You forgave me enough to see me through that drunk and even a few more after that when I missed breakfast or you took the train to see me and I slept through our connection.
You are my favourite step nine. A reason we can be blessed with many lives, a throughline conversation and an old friendship’s timeline’s worth of breakfasts.
Yay obviously not the end, as teen, I could tuck into and dust a thirty pack.
Not the end of the adventure, or the research, and thankfully not or our friendship.
You call me Carol Danvers and have seen me turn this epic life into a superhero prequel because this is not the end of it.
I Can’t Believe It
by Nelly W.
Worth thinking about?
the moment, an atmospheric tenderness: late summer’s embrace, home after the first birth
My Columbian friend tells me that girl babies steal your beauty. The gender was revealed in the OR, but on the adage alone, it was clear. The new parents were so grumpy. Acne and long-term not-sleeping on both of them.
We were walking
The stalks of corn so high
The harvest moon so high
The kind of walk that massages the earth:
Man: philosopher peripeditically strolling
Woman: wonder-filled and swaggering
Kitty-cat-like leashless dog: clomp clomp trot-- so proud!
Bushy tail clippity cloppity
Long empty country road like a classic American painting
Far from people
I was letting you in
on how they were happy-tired and grumbly-tired
So new, brimming with story
New family stories
It really took them a year to get in a full, good sleep!
Like with us, with our origin story,
up every night for a month,
that first month, not sleeping, working together at the institute, staying up
until
the tear gas and the protests in Quebec City with the 4-storey bonfire and the parade of 100,000. Hula hoops and fire breather fire dancers. “Solidarite! Sole-ee-dar-it-tay”
Holding hands in the roar
That’s when we slept.
So I was trying to tell you about living in Toronto, and the how and what of this longed-for baby even with my sisters’ blood and ovarian betrayal. All of the proudness of the pup in the city: maybe she was on set with Neil Patrick Harris! and you turned to me and said,
“We dodged a bullet when we didn’t have children.
You are the most effing irresponsible person in the world.
You don’t deserve children.”
Now, so many miles, addresses, and lives later,
I’m trying to unweave belief.
And let go the kite string on the rea `sons I drink.
I’m Looking Into It
by Peter Fried
I’m looking into it:
the looking glass.
Through it. Screw it,
stale, gravestones,
endings. Braided hair.
Braids. The world spinning
on its axis. The choir singing,
Hossanah in Excellesis.
Come here dear. Steer my car
near your curb. Curb your dog.
Put the collar on my neck,
call me reverent, what the heck!
Put me in a tail spin. Render
me useless. Take me to the
slag heap with your other kids,
the ones that poke fun at you,
and one day might poke a
hole in the smoke…stack.
Bring me my tobacco, my
Drum, my Shag, my papers,
my skins. Feel me where
the light comes in. Liberate me
from self-consciousness from my
portable prison made of light
kill me in a disjointed way
right now right here on St. Patrick’s Day.
The Pogues, The Boomtown Rats, and Sinead
O’Connor. Tell her it’s not because of her
that I have a boner. On Talbot Road,
on Westbourne Grove. Gimme, gimme,
gimme more vibration Jimmy.
Joe Strummer. What a bummer.
Daisy Colburn. I did a runner.
Come on, come on, take me on
the anxiety omnibus, a quick
trip to Battersea shouldn’t kill us.
Bubble and squeak. Eel and pie.
No need to wait, we’re going to die!
It Happened A Long Time Ago
by Peter Fried
It happened a long time ago.
Did it? Did it really-like-happen-
like a long time ago? Anyway. What?
What happened a long time ago?
Nothing? I know nothing happened a long time ago,
because nothing is happening right now.
A long time ago the river said nothing.
She did not speak to her neighbor.
She didn’t mend fences,
make good on promises, on small talk.
She didn’t. It fizzled out. It all did.
It was all left out to dry in the wind,
blowing across the farm,
chilling the livestock,
blowing up skirts,
causing a ruckus, a commotion,
a, ‘come on baby’.
“Please baby baby baby please”
Down there in the yard
with your rubber boots sinking into the mud
growing impatient, your skull hurting
like hell. Blissed out on something.
Blissed out on bliss balls.
The bliss balls laid out on the stall.
For anyone to take, to put one by one
into open mouths. Ready to chew down hard,
on the cud, of the money,
the wedge. The sinking ship that wouldn’t
float-refused to. Wanted to sink,
to say farewell, Titanic-style,
plop, whoosh, gone- no tomorrow,
arrivederci. bloop bloop bloop
Down she goes
Nothing much to see up hear
Dead Calm.
Just How Does that Work?
by Peter Fried
“Just how does that work?”
asked the doctor, letting go of all
expectations,
dropping the deck of cards
onto the pile of lonelinesses-
tomorrows which never came,
did not come, have not, will not,
cannot, would not, ought not.
To the stable with the barrow boy-
out with the rifle, don’t stifle, this trifle,
this connection, this appointment with hate,
with the labyrinth at the end of time-
at the end of the hall,
turn right for hate room 101, or 108,
I forget which- you will remember-
just follow the barbwire-
laid-low rosary
leading the way to kingdom come,
to Valhalla, the hate bomb,
the eight ball- don’t get stuck
behind the shadow Sisyphus got stuck
behind, getting his inverse, reverse tan
on the hill to the beacon-
comb your hair stallion,
meet me where the shadows are long,
where the asphalt ends,
where the fun starts,
the angels land-
light as feathers,
deft as dandelions
before they are blown-
don't pass me up because my skin is sallow,
because I didn't swallow,
because I didn't change
my Carhartt tutu
for the real deal!
