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Cristel Orrand Writer

@theamalgamist

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non facio—revelo
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A Gap Year of Missing Memory I tried to find the missing year. At first, it was only slough piles, snake skin, translucent scales deteriorating in the street. Later, it was a broken feather, a red-tailed hawk's, floating in a puddle. These were clues, I knew, though I could not replace their meaning. But soon, dreaming began to fill the cracks and Gary Sinise bought Shell Island, as a sanctuary for the sea, and veterans with missing limbs, and PTSD, and missing memories trauma- locked inside people like me. Inch worms writing in octopus ink, and the pink carpet under the sink. Then there was no difference between a wake and dreaming, rendering sleep unnecessary, and my speech, mad-seeming, drifted towards the dead, glowing, standing vigil beside my bed, showing me terrible things, I had no other way of knowing. I saw the flood in vines, films they played in my mind- a ghostly water horse fuming the sorghum and corn burning, violently turning brown in decay, vital information, exigencies relayed, but the next day, I can't say why. I'd say it's fine, but, of course, it isn't. I've seen the scars of bullet wounds, a surgeon's hands inside my chest, blood, and sacrifice in the street, but this- my mind declared off limits to me, it's just too horrible to see. I've searched far, and various ways,for my memory of the missing year, though the main is still locked away. But maybe it is a sanctuary, a shell island locked inside the sea, where knowing knows no bounds, and the ink worms squirm free. #igpoets sometimes i also write #horror #poetscommunity #poetrycommunity #poetrylovers #poetsofinstagram #instapoet #poetryisnotdead #instapoems #instapoetry #poetrytribe #poetscorner #poetsofig #spilledink #writing #poetsandwriters #writersofinstagram #typewriterpoetry #womenwhowrite #poetrygram #womenwriters #igpoet #poemoftheday #readersofinstagram #_poeticsouls #wanderer by @theamalgamist
Mother’s Milk p6 I know it isn't entirely rational, but a childhood spent overseas left me with this idea that if I could just speak the language, then it would be home. And I would belong. I spend almost all my time now in my #mothertongue and while it should be more comfortable, I still find myself translating, hoping I can make the words and meanings align. Then we'd understand each other. Then we would belong. #igpoets #poetscommunity #poetrycommunity #poetrylovers #poetsofinstagram #instapoet #poetryisnotdead #instapoems #instapoetry #poetrytribe #poetscorner #poetsofig #spilledink #writing #poetsandwriters #writersofinstagram #typewriterpoetry #womenwhowrite #poetrygram #womenwriters #igpoet #poemoftheday #readersofinstagram #_poeticsouls #mothers #wanderer #TCK #thirdculture by @theamalgamist
#Praha 6/7 #igpoets #poetrycommunity #poetrylovers #poetsofinstagram #instapoet #poetryisnotdead #instapoems #instapoetry #poetrytribe #poetscorner #poetsofig #spilledink #writing #poetsandwriters #writersofinstagram #typewriterpoetry #womenwhowrite #poetrygram #womenwriters #igpoet #poemoftheday #readersofinstagram #_poeticsouls #wanderer #poetscommunity by @theamalgamist
We walk slow, soft talking around things too tender for poking or sting; it ain't eggshells, babe, but the desire to ease. So man, lay your head to my heart, feel its hum; hear, from my sternum to your drum... a song, sung, the only fucking way I know how— In the vibrations my body. And for a moment, I do not know if I am still, a lion, or one lost of its head strong... but I find myself more & more. In covers: of muslin & steel; in the lanolin of animal & wool, & still more, a sword unwilling to wound. I s'pose I see wisdom now, where once I saw weakness, & God, it is a mercy to be a boxer shaking off her gloves. So, man, lay, your head to my breast, our arms, forgotten; speak to me through the tenored vibratto of soul-song. ❤️‍🔥 Ya'll know I love words far more than is healthy, but I find myself lately wishing we'd all just STFU. No talking. Just listening with our skin. Feeling another's heartbeat. Hum soothing notes to our souls like whale song. Can you imagine a coordinated global 1 hour vow of silence? To hear the birds & hearts beat. Just the idea of it makes my eyes fill with peace. Also, it's generally considered a VERY serious (like cataclysmic) warning sign when ♌️ Leo goes quiet - BUT not in this case. I promise. Or am I a lion toying with her prey? 😂 Never. OK. Rarely. 😂 #poetrycommunity #poetsofinstagram #lovepoem #boxers for #peace ;) by @theamalgamist
* * Then I Will Hold You in it She comes to me when purple dusk is still dotted in bursts of orange cinders, unlit cigarette wet stuck to her lips, asking for a lighter. I hold blue flame to the tip til the embers are kissed, & thumb two tears on her Cherokee cheekbones. She blows sideways, out the window, same as a corner of her mouth - motion so old, it needs no... Thinking. I tidy a moment & she... waits for me... to slow. Then, she asks if I know she's likely to die tonight, or tomorrow, but soon. And God, I do not need eyes to see the question is really who will lie to her? But it has never been me. I nod & tell her, "tomorrow, I think," The last match goes out, a dredging of disbelief. When she stubs her cigarette, she asks if we can go. I nod, undoing dates, releasing her from all our oaths & plans. "I want to die in the ocean," she says, & I help her into my car, driving longways along the rocky coast. I say, "then I'll hold you in it, & let its waves rock us until they must break us apart." 💜🧡 I kept waking up last night, confused by the time —sure it had changed, looking at the clock, insisting to myself the timelines must have adjusted by now. I'd fall back asleep & dream (so real) it was days before she died. I dreamed I took her to the ocean & held her until her spirit slipped away, & my body was washed back onto the rocky shore. I miss her in my bones & belly & irises. I miss our "uni-brain" understanding, but I do not "if only". God knows I have been loved enough & lucky enough & lived enough for several lifetimes. IDK if #gratitude is one of the steps of #grief but it should be if it isn't. #womenwhowrite #poetrycommunity #poetsofinstagram by @theamalgamist
It has been so long. Weeks of endless years, & weariness prickling my eyes — sharp somehow... Despite their roundness. I have flown from earth's warm belly to the nakedness of trees, shivering, & I know it isn't... But it feels like sickness. Like a star's gone out, or a furnace, amber sap from the fire maple. Even the wood is thirsty. Too, my tongue, & I fear my heart long run on torn's leaking to empty. But I feel invisible things. Knowing the earth recognizes seeds from fallen trees that seem lifeless. I believe before I can see. Dusting cobwebs from tombs, heal'd mettle to rebloom as welding fuses. For the light to pass through. 🍂 Typically by now I've felt the ghosts of frost creep round the windows, & have sung myself into some version of acceptance with "August & Everything After." But not yet - I can't bear to. Maybe because I was so warm, this cold (that isn't even that cold) bites harder. (And now I am whining like someone who lives in the South & last night was only 48F 😂 but you know, metaphorically too.) I just keep shivering. So I've been doing stained glass again. Because it was suddenly imperative to fuse & melt broken things, & where they hurt, to let the light pass through. My at home version of semi-static homeopathic alchemy against S.A.D., Scorpio, Mercury, retrogrades, cold, & melancholy. 😂 #poetrycommunity #poetsofinstagram #Poetryasmedicine #poet #poem by @theamalgamist
I. I do not know who has said that Scorpio is a sign of water; I only feel a burn as the Sun crosses. And the moon hangs over men... In a delicate balance, no matter the state of stars, or Mars, or sky's imbalance, for there're many wars, & too few men who will end them. II. So, I s'pose that's why I was made a rare kind of woman who wields a blade, or guides a bow's arrows between flesh & bone, by prayer, only to later stitch the wound in a poem, & comfrey & gentian. And the moon hangs... its light... As an orb, or aura, the white hum slowly covered by shadow, to be revealed again as gypsum, & only awhile, is my heart, too, darkened. Til I suppose it is my fingers that find, like lips thirsting, the wound, my eyes see - sorrow, but not pity. III. I watch a blue whale swimming, crowned with her still-born calf, a spout of air billowing through the ocean, but not the tiny lungs. I paused at the humanity in that, knowing well the desire to parade my grief, not for attention but as black bombazine, something that might signal when I can no: please, leave me alone; I loved too deeply. And the moon hung tiny thorns... If I could have, I would've carried my own crown of grief, & wrest a wreath of holly to my breast, thin red lines of leaf etched into the milk glass of stretched skin. IV. But I do not flinch & what I share is not for attention or hollow, but for scars to speak when I can no: My God, I loved too deeply to be a blind or an ever obedient thing. The moon hangs... grit in my eyes. Another season, a marker of deer, or harvest; strawberry or sturgeon, & the world leaves me a battlefield, like the gift of blade to a surgeon. 🤍 Call it stars or the moon pulling tides... but for whatever reason, all I could think about today was 1) Judith & Holfernes & what it meant (before Gentilleschi), 2) why we are each called to things (& what it takes to break with them) & 3) a very rare opportunity emerged at work & I got to talk about Catherine of Medici & her damn fork. Believe it or not, they let me hire engineers. 🤣😂 And sometimes green berets... But no art majors, sadly. Photos from recent trips. by @theamalgamist
I want to see you with your hair down when the sun starts to soften the lines along the horizon. And on our faces... Oh honey, I want you to pull me to your lap, & let me pin you down; our bodies like sand — giving in to the other. Stay. Let me... Trace the mounds under your eyes, land butterfly kisses, light as dandelion wishes & let the salt run... Because I will no. I want to watch as the fear leaves you, weightless & how your heart climbs the cliffs of mine. And plants itself. As lightning does in rods of iron, melt the sand into glass nothing can break- not even years. And I want you... To see me & know my reason why, but stay —stay bowed by the mystery - in awe, that any of it exists. God, I want to see... The blue light slowly weave emerald waves between us, your eyes fluttering, & your body shudder as I love you... Breathless. ☀️ 4 o'clock on a beach, by the sea, when the sun starts to soften the borders of countries, the horizon, the lines of our faces... #love #lovepoetry #poeticsouls #myisland #poetsofinstagram by @theamalgamist
* * More than Side Ways Lately, I have recalled... The feel of travertine beneath my feet, bedrooms of childhood homes, & neighborhood streets — how limestone whitens in the rain, the vault & vastness of domes... And then, I have felt myself... Blush...The rush of blood in my veins pounding alleyways, halls, in tracks of pocket doors — sideways into the places no one ever stays - only passes. And for a long time, I spoke... Wild phrases into the ether yet did not fully feel their meaning. But hell-bent, plowed along, like beasts of burden, or warfighters with the persistence of youth. And all along, I've felt you here. Despite the distance. Cuz for us it is what passes between trees — you can close your eyes & silence does not matter. It is in the soil, in our roots, grown intertwined. One cut & the other... Will no rise. And as long as muscle cradles my bones, lord, I keep tryin', but darkness hangs velvet curtains til sky contains the contours of your face; & I see you in... color. Though today, I still cannot say... If I'm grown or wild child re-made— dangled toes & cigarette held out a window of an acqua Honda civic, badly singing The Rain Song, cherry flicked, the embers ever bouncing... Into the black asphalt behind us. All I know is you drove a knife into the life I had before I knew... what I am, or that you existed, what words meant, long before I minded stones, or being alone, but soon I will need... More than side ways. *** I really have no explanation for this kinship with trees, or way of saying why the colors matter. Only that they do, like laying in leaves, & especially when the sky is a thick black blanket & yet you can make out (always a fabulous idea) the shapes of faces. Like a velvet Elvis painting. ;) My friend Megan had an acqua Honda civic when we were teenagers. Her daughter turned 18 yesterday & I wondered how that was so when it was just the other day we were driving around, Houses of the Holy on repeat, flicking cherries out the window, watching the embers bounce a few times highway 15-501 before they went out. "that I love you so..." #love #poeticsouls #poetryofinstagram #poetsofinstagram by @theamalgamist
A thousand acorns fall. The white oaks, & adorn sidewalks by my home, five across in white gold. The neckline of a gown, & our skins stained in saffron, marron, sour- wood honey, & God — How we have grown... Too far & wide for arms to wrap 'round, but I want to know: can you love even what you cannot hold? As I do. Though I have tripped over ruts, fallen pinecones, & magnolias, trying not to — not to turn - my ankles or too much of myself in... All my missteps, wrung. Still sting! And still I walk! shame unhung, the wind setting footsteps down on unstable branches. And I think... the hardest tree to forgive is me. 🤍 I went for a walk at lunch today & I listened to the wind's footsteps in the trees, & there's really no accounting for why, but I started thinking of all I've done wrong in this life. Ruminating I guess is a better word. This doesn't happen to me often any more (used to & what impressive walls I built myself from it) so I tried my best friend's voice. "Baby girl, maybe you did the best you could with what you got." Nope. So I let her ghost try some more. "Can you honestly say you ever wanted to hurt anyone?" No, never. A little better but not much... "How is it you forgive everyone else? Are you not worthy of the same grace?" A little more... Then I started thinking all the time we spend beating ourselves up or hoping, praying, asking etc for forgiveness... what if the whole point is for us to forgive ourselves? To transmute that feeling into goodness? To change its chemical composition... What if that is what actually changes the balance? I don't have a doctorate in theology, but my reasonably informed & highly felt hunch is this is an important waypoint on the quest to be whole of heart. Or I can hush up & you can just have a poem! 😂 #poetrylovers #love (that extends to self) #poetsofinstagram #poetscommunity #nature by @theamalgamist
The wind blows... But I have gone inside & the hurricane shutters are closed, so I sweat like incense, pooling, or disease leaving crimson bodies. I light a candle for you; the pew creaks under my knees & even these small things —intrude upon another's grief. Her fist pounds. Her chest, a hum coming, her mouth finding a silent roundness, lips forming unsound words & she is lost to this world. I usher the others away, leaving her the sanctum, but before I turn to go, I say, Que Dieu vous bénisse et vous garde. Hoping it is enough. ❤️‍🔥 To tether her to this life. And then, I saw man (wearing only his skin) set a fire, & run, flames licking at his legs & the trunks of baby banyan trees. I watched the crawling shades of cocoa & flame climbing the hillside, & I didn't even find it all that strange. In fact, for some time, I was half expecting to burst into flames, or at least be invited to dance naked around the conflagration. ;) This is entirely true & I was rather worried about them, but I saw the naked man again after the fire died down & he appeared unscathed. Only metaphorical flames for me — stung 3x by box jellyfish & can confidently say they're 500x worse than normal jellyfish. Got a cool new scar though that looks like lightning. Photo from just before naked fire man let loose Painting from Eglise Saint-Martin de Tours, SXM. #naturepoem #grief #poetsofinstagram #poetrycommunity #poetrytribe by @theamalgamist
I. The cleverest of things only come to me in pieces these days, & I do not mind their insufficiencies.... for something has changed. And I am living. Despite all the ways life ought to have killed me. II. For a time, I stood... Behind steely safety, at arms & in HESCO'd perimeters, behind rules & uniform declarations. Then, for many years I wandered the mouths of gaping volcanos & I — never feared the fire. In descent, the deeper I went, the flames grewn higher, I would not shrink but held them as infants, tighter to my breast, and — Unburnt, I have survived greater conflagrations, but none that burned so undamnably. III. And when I arose, it was without clothes & without the weight of others's shame. Nude as I was made. And you looked away, missing not the fantasy, but a reality that I need... No armor. IV. The ache of rope scars twisted. The grey light of a sudden storm, wind that upswept the sea's mist, the downpour from sails sagging as a baby's small cloths, upend. And I pled, "Deliver us." What I want & what I need span two beaches & my hands cannot reach their shores for the gaping whole of an ocean between them. V. And still, I am not sorry I came, nor went! into the fire belly below, through ancient catacombs though we can no longer read their stones. I have gone before & will go again, fearing no man, nor needing. & yet I find myself wishing your chest was a lake where I could lay my living beside your wake. by @theamalgamist

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