Big Little Soul

 

Big little soul my mother called me

Big little soul

 

They said

“Well, emotions are the product of past life misery”

 

Desperate, I again asked:

“I’m just an adult in a child size body?” 

the answer always: “Yes”

 

This is your life.

My life?

 

Years later after they reviewed and viewed

my mother as: Probably Degraded  and I found her

on the streets half-mad with belief

 

I reached back to our years of bleak labor, uniforms & statistics,

the blank stares of dreamless children —

the corridors dim and rancid

 

It takes as long as 10 seconds between

a European man chasing purity pouring water over the sauna coals

and the rush of Hellfire steam in our eyes, our lungs–

the stumbling out, the fighting  for breath

 

The woman screamed: “Get back in the box.

Do you want to be a tiger or a dilettante? “

A tiger she would answer for herself

 

The hours spent sweating out my child sized body’s poisons while

each day passed outside: the shrieks of school yards

letting out, humming cars and raucous nights

 

The adult sized bodies described them as:

 drugged up, degraded, all  living criminal lives, 

and I was empty inside except for the silent wishing

to be happy someday and made of such things

 

The sauna gave me fevers, gave me heat and wet

and everywhere around me the skin of adult sized bodies

pressed against the skin of my child size body—the heat

rising to the high bench — the only space I had left

 

As Florida grew thick

I learned when you live in a hotels garage while being “redeemed” 

shame is hotter than a sauna 

 

The sauna was underground 

and entered through the bowels of the building

low and deep, and it darkened with each step down

 

The garbage room decayed around the corner

covered us in its stench when the door was opened

 

The black & blue filed by heads down, tending the waste

as I listened to the adult sized bodies

forcing me awake, forcing me to drink, forcing me to run

my lids hung heavy in the air humid and buzzing around me

 

Dizzy, they said to drink and drink and drink more water

 

“Swallow/run/sweat/report”

Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. 

 

I sometimes dreamt my name meant something —

as if big little thetan was my power

 

Years later desperate, alone—I asked:

“You mean I can just crash on your couch?”

And he answered: “Yes”

Adding that he had things and drinks in the fridge he would make us..

I didn’t ask the price

There must be exchange

 

The woman who pushed me back inside

the sauna yelled my full name when she called me

 

“Mother” became the name

I didn’t speak of except for inside me

 

Today I celebrate my mother’s smile—

when I visit—

and I know this means she recognizes me

 

I now understand I had no power

 

I want Scientologists to live

through WWIII but crime is what is never named:

the outside full of poison

 

But I can’t control the fever rising, I fall asleep and wake

with the woman standing, yelling — 

her adult sized body looming over me; 

the Hellfire steam,

the sweat and stench and poison

 

“Do you know what we call people who aren’t saving the planet? Degraded!”

and I start awake and am standing inside the sauna —

nothing near me but secrets and sweat

 

Degraded. They said. 

They said: save the world but —

 

Let it mean something to feel a thing

 

Let big little souls feel a thing for as long as 10 seconds

 

 Let a thing listen

 

 Let me listen to the love that took two decades to find me

 

 Let it mean something to feel a thing