"Or, storyless, it may spiral in on itself, circling hte core of a single image or idea, without climax, without a paraphrasable theme."

My lyric essay assignment. It took me 2 and a half hours of solid, focused writing. I think I'm pretty satisfied. Lyric essays are nice because they are in closest form to poetry, and poetry is my favorite because of the language and imagery encompassed into it. This is what the Seneca Review published on lyric essays:

"they forsake narrative line, discursive logic, and the art of persuasion in favor of idiosyncratic meditation."
"The lyric essay partakes of the poem in its density and shapeliness, its distillation of ideas and musicality of language."
"...often accretes by fragments, taking shape mosaically..."
"While it is ruminative, it leaves pieces of interpretation. Its voice, spoken from a privacy that we overhear and enter, has the intimacy we have come to expect in the person essay."
"We turn to the lyric essay-- with its malleability, ingenuity, immediacy, complexity, and use of poetic language-- to give us a fresh way to make music of the world."


Emily Sexton
Engl. 305
9/3/07


"Diseased"


It’s happening again. I am lying in a cold sweat, helpless and writhing in pain. Doctors and nurses swarm around me. Their voices all blend together into one sound. The white walls are silently screaming at my frailty. Wrinkled faces above me speak as if I understand. The truth is I have no idea what is going on. Hands are prodding me, needles are poking me. I just want to know what’s going on, but I cannot voice these thoughts and I cannot move out of fear. I am being rolled into another room, and somebody pulls my convulsing body onto a metal table. X-rays seem so cool when you’re a little kid, but lying underneath dangerous waves of radiation is not all that it’s cracked up to be. My mind is lost in my body’s pain; all I can do is feel. And everything feels bad. Everything hurts. I am too young for this type of thing. I thought grown-ups deal with this stuff. Sickness shouldn’t burden my life yet. I have not even entered high school.

The hospital bed is comfortable, but the narcotics seeping into my bloodstream may or may not have a heavy influence over that observation. However, the room is anything but comfortable. The emptiness and lack of color laugh at me, mocking my inability to move or smile. I feel very alone and very numb. The air smells like that hospital food smell, as if the food is sick and in need of some healing also. Unfamiliar faces walk in and out of my frosted vision every now and then. There is a tube running from a needle in my hand to a bag of clear liquid hanging from a pole on wheels. I feel like ripping it out and letting the blood squirt onto the clean, white sheets just to spite this hospital and all the hurt it reminds me of. I swim back and forth between consciousness and a clouded reality. Pain ebbs at my side, teasing me, as I wonder if it will peak again or remain dull. It never really goes away. It’s always enough just to remind me that it’s there.

I’m missing another day of academia, another day of my youth wasted on woe. My sister leaves for school. Hours and hours later she arrives home, telling my mom about her day and the A she got on a test. My body screams at me, desiring to be out running around like my sister, learning about Shakespeare in English class and going to soccer practice. I tell it to stop whining, weakness has chained us to this bed. It wishes for death sometimes, but my mother’s kind words and loving touch push those futile thoughts far away. I am motionless. I am lying in the exact same place I have been all morning and afternoon, in my room and under my covers. If I get up and try to walk around, I drown in dizziness and it overtakes me. Nausea is like an annoying fly that just won’t leave me alone. It has become my only company. This ongoing battle strains every muscle inside of me and tests every ounce of strength I can muster. I keep on fighting.

I could have died, they told me. Six years ago, my life could have ended. I never would have made it to college. I never would have fallen in love. I never would have seen the east coast. I never would have traveled to another country… I wouldn’t be living right now, period. If that isn’t a scary thought, I don’t know what is. People wonder why I live with such joy, why I laugh so loud. They wonder why even someone hinting at the idea of a hospital fills me up with so much emotion, I might explode. If only they knew the whole story. Maybe if they knew a nurse’s error could have eradicated my existence in the blink of an eye, they would understand a little better. An accidental overdose on morphine could have taken my life, but I am still here. Lungs still breathing. Heart still pumping. I am still alive.

My friends are crowded around; they’re holding my hands and rubbing my back. Everyone’s eyes are on me. They begin to pray over me as I cry and cry and cry. The pain exhausts every inch of me, but I can hear their words float through the air and fly straight up to heaven. My tears stop pouring over and the pain subsides in a matter of seconds. How do you explain something like this? Even in life’s cruelest moments, miracles can be found. Hope can never be destroyed, even in our lowest of times. This is the light that shines through the darkness of a diseased life.

The darkness has overcome me this time. I have lost count now. How many days have dripped with this sorrow that comes from defeat? How many times have I been forced to not participate and have fun with the other kids? How many times have I been unable to contribute, unable to function like everyone else? I am so low. No one is here to hold my hand this time and whisper in my ear, “you can get through this, everything will be ok.” I think about the past five years with weariness in my heart. I wonder about the next fifty with fear at the forefront of a mingled mixture of feelings. I’m old enough now though, to know I must go on. Tomorrow is a new day. Perhaps pain will hinder me, perhaps it will not. That’s just the way it is. For the rest of my life, kidney stone disease will ravage my body. And every time it happens, I will be 13 years old again, lying in the hospital, having no idea what is going on, just feeling… hurting. But I will be living. And that’s all that really matters.