I am both wound and knife
I am fox and crow and hunter
I am the river and the eroded land
I claw and fight against fortune’s will
And still the currents toss me
Like sediment churning in the rapids
I have never been able to imagine my future
Can’t see it through the cloudy present
But watch the past as it splinters behind me
Into millions of fractured branches
Drifting across the water’s surface
From that vantage point I am small
And stare, gripped by fear
As the visions tumble past
And fill me with recollections
Horrors and apparitions I scramble to catch
While I can still interrogate their truth
I see the day that all of this began
The gray of the sky, old snow piled in mounds
Head spinning, breath caught in chest
A throbbing headache
Fear and then numbness
An emptiness that came and never went away
The universe decides to be kind
And gives me glimpses of the sky, the moon
Rain falling gently onto pavement
The warmth of a hug
The weight of a hand
The ache of deep laughter
I remember everything
And carry it like the pit of a peach
Settled deep in the center of my stomach
Forgiveness doesn’t change its mass
And time only renders me
More accustomed to its weight
The apparitions pack up, move on, move away
I linger and watch weeds emerge
From the soil in the cracks in the sidewalk
They bake slowly in the sun
Then wither and crumble into bits
That scatter across the asphalt in the breeze
As new weeds grow up in their place
Standing there I am suddenly weary
I decide I should sit, take a rest from my troubles
I hold out my hands
And stare
Until fate’s inevitable grooves
Begin to settle deep into my palms
Good fortune befalls who it feels like
And for bad fortune, the same
No creatures transpired
No curse came to pass
My circumstance not a punishment
My actions to no fault but my own
And as for the rest,
A coin flip,
A coincidence,
Just my luck
In the aftermath of completing my other poems and stories, I created a series of three artworks containing text that reads “just my luck.” This phrase summarizes the conclusion I have taken away from the process of creating this body of work. Each of these three text-based works connects to the other artworks I had already created, with one being a paper-cut artwork, one being a quilt, and the last being a black and white photograph.
In Baudelaire’s (1993) poem “L'Héautontimorouménos (The Self-Tormentor),” he declares:
I am the wound and the knife!
I am the slap and the cheek!
I am the limbs and the wheel,
And the victim and the executioner! (pg. 98).
This poem, which I read during the timeframe in which I created these works, echoes the thoughts I had regarding my own circumstances. I am both wound and knife in each and every one of these situations of conflict—I played roles of both victim and villain in each. I write about these realizations in the final poem, “The Luck of the Draw.” Here, I conclude my narrative by describing my enduring obsession with dwelling on the past even as others move on. I end by accepting that there was no prophecy and I was never cursed. All along, it was my own poor choices and the luck of the draw.