Like a stupid cartoon

I fell down the stairs. In February and on my ass, step-by-step, like a stupid cartoon, like I knew what to do, all the way to the bottom and the cement basement floor.  

In Montana, last year, I fell in the river. My pink, inflatable tube hurtled toward a dead tree branch on the river’s edge that was itching to take out my eyeball. I grabbed the branch, held on for only a moment, maybe two, and pushed away. My tube and I spun into the rapids backward. 

I don’t mean this in a self-deprecating way, but I don’t know what to do in situations like these. 

It wasn’t until the night of the stair slip that I realized how badly I was bruised and, how if I had fallen in any other way, in any other direction, if I had tried to grab the railing to stop my fall, I would have broken something or hit my head and, how, because Skylar was out of town, I would have been on the bottom of those stairs for hours, at the very least. But instead I fell on my ass and badly bruised the one part of my body free of soft bones and precious organs and brain meat. Just a mass of fat and muscle that was soon the color of blackberry pie. 

“The worst bruise I’ve ever seen,” Meg said. 

On the river, and in the rapid, I flipped over and, somehow, like I knew what to do, I lifted my legs and let the low, rocky river take me. The river was snow-cold, like the Idaho lakes of my childhood. I couldn’t see the fish, but I could smell them. I didn’t try to gather myself or my things. I let go and kept my limbs from catching on the river detritus. 

My wit is ten seconds too late, which I guess, at that point, isn’t wit. I automatically ask, strangers, what? when they speak to me. I answer their question, mid-repeat.

In the moment, I don’t know what to do.

In Italy, I did yoga each day. In cat-cow, I set an intention: I am here to try. I tried not to think about my body not bending or twisting or lifting like anyone else’s, about how I was scared to try. I wished I was falling, so I could catch myself; but instead I was leaping and I was hesitating. 

In savasana, I let the ants crawl on me and the flies bite. On my back, in happy baby, two fingers gripped around my big toes, I thought about breakfast. Ricotta croissants, the mystery pink juice, the coffee running out. I was afraid to ask for adjustments, much less help to get into full wheel. 

I wonder if I don’t know my body, myself, really at all.  

In Italy, a woman on the retreat brought cyanotype paper. At the movie star pool, I arranged twigs, caper berry leaves, and a cigarette — because with paper and composition and objects, I know what to do.

I showed Skylar the art of my bruise, inside Photoshop with its layers and blurs and grains, and he said it looked liked a cyanotype, like it had been made by the sun.