who I was

my knees sound like old wood being broken #beyondphysicaltherapy. I am not committed to writing: i still can't type, I have not been published in years, believe poetry is not marketable and not important. I am a shell of who I was (who was I?).
My children are depressed, my husband is overwhelmed. the cats are free range. the coffee is downstairs-too far ( see above reference to knees) I cannot afford physical therapy three times a week and I don't exersize because it hurts.I feel disgustingly fat and cannot believe the scale, which is never accurate, and so confirms this delusion. some days it say 10101 and other days it is closer s 10100 which is better albeit still way (weigh) too much. Is this a reflection of me always feeling like I am too much? too loud, too visible, way too needly too too too everything.
(wild thing, you make my heart sing. you make everything grooovyyyy)
There was exhileration. there was art bleeping *** edited to remove etc etc** everywhere. there was no permanence, no reliable food source. there were banners and broken glass and mahogany furniture, reminders of my grandmothers exquisite new orleans taste. there were Japanese relics of our travels. there was the pervasive smell of linseed oil in everything. there was,even then, the feeling of if only , if only , if only.
we wore clothes from other people, bathed and ate in other peoples houses, bore the scorn of other peoples belief that they were somehow superior in that  "we belong to some accepted, shared realm and you do not" sort of way.
We bore that scorn and we wore it with our cast off clothing , our lack of foundations, our bodies rarely clean-the bath tub was copper and the water did not run. for christ's sake this is america and we had no water.
still she painted . she tuned into the classical station on her fm radio and she painted while we deflected the scorn of our neighbors, such as they were.
so. there you have it. a childhood reflection. they come to me in the fall when i miss new england. you cannot go back. but you carry it forward in your cells somehow beneath the  teeth and bones, the memories still survive rising like ghostly mists from the wetlands.
now after days of rain- the street still shines with it- the sun pokes out.
I would be ok if I could just stay here with my books and my camera to see the sky with. Blue sky with clouds broken and strewn throughout. the birds emerge and call to each other. they sing we think. how do they hear us? do they at all? other than to be alarmed at our predatory presence?
I am nestled in my bed. coffee is in a cup propped up by a blanket- a fake fleece camp style blanket. My computer is opened to a mail program (a reader I tell my students, an aggregator. I do not use that word to avoid confounding them further. Poor darlings.) My knitting -socks, toe up, magic loop, short row heel, made with "blue wall", medium sock weight yarn from bluemoonfiberarts.com-is next to my computer. I do not have time to sit and knit much so I do a row here and a row there. no worries, there is no hurry. they will get finished eventually. In the back of my mind, there are the other 101 things I would like to finish, but I am practicing living in the moment. not doing so much wishing. planning. striving. goal setting. just be still.
"Just. Be. Still," she used to command to the squirming, noisy children,
right before the pinch.