[Video Description: Pale person with pink hair, brown eyes and wearing pink glasses and a gray and white long-sleeve shirt sits on a gray couch in front of an ivory wall with two guitars.]
This is a piece I wrote describing the experience PTSD and flight. It is really an overlap of several nights, one of them being New Year’s Eve. The photo included here with the captured moon is one I took during one of those flights in downtown Fresno.
This is the first in a 3-part series I’m working on related to lived PTSD experiences of fight, flight and freeze. Recently, I’ve had a breakthrough in memories and instead of disappearing on me again, they are sticking. It’s overwhelming, but I’m writing through the dark to feel the light.
All of these things, I’ve already survived.
[CN: PTSD]
Flight: Under A Stark Raving Moon
Under a stark raving moon you’ll find me
In my bare feet running through the streets
arms open wide, embracing the night
Gulping in air
unrestricted, I can breath
Finally, I am free
I am free and this moon calls me
She calls me past closed stores, metal doors, boarded up buildings
and weary, abandoned people
She calls me past a man who yells, “Satan, get behind me”
As he smashes a bottle on the bus bench
next to that church with a brick steeple
I run through alleys and grime
My heart is fire. My brain is fire. I am electric.
gravel and glass bite
There’s blood on my feet
but I don’t hurt and I don’t slow
Like the gingerbread man, you can’t catch me
You can’t catch me
The Boyz N The Hood take a step back when I arrive
off the sidewalk into the grass, their words die
They watch my every step
They watch my every stride
And their faces share what they don’t speak
I’m running crazy past them
I’m running crazy in the streets
Midnight strikes, a New Year has rung
With clattering pans and loud guns
Through neighborhoods and commotion I run
Wild eye and free, no one can touch me.
Nothing can touch me
Not tonight
Not while the moon calls me past all the places I shouldn’t be
International Badass Activists 