coma daxle I realize I am in some sort of a coma my memory is extremely bad even though I've been sober for quite awhile when I lost my mind a fuse was blown there's quiet in my head where there never used to be and things change I make different decisions than I would have before air from the fan is blowing in one ear and out the other this is a statement from a mental patient 010811 ... lost my girlfriend was in a coma for a while. actually for a week or so. she woke up on her 18th birthday. 010812 ... syringe beep beep beep beep 011221 ... daxle back in the coma I think maybe this is "normal" 011222 ... nom 1990 060125 ... mindpop Rehab hospitals see the unlucky and the lucky. I shared a room with a woman who went into her office on a weekend. Thieves broke in. They stole laptops and beat her over her head. Because it was the weekend, no one found her until Monday, when she was in a coma. Three months later, she suddenly woke up. That’s when I met her. She was in a wheelchair and was terribly skinny — less than 100 pounds. She ate lots of candy to fatten herself up. She did not seem angry. 121008 ... kerry for several days i was a drifting jellyfish, tentacles sedate and careless waving beneath me like ribbons and lately i dream that i can’t sleep, that i’m tossing and turning, twisted in the sheets. i can feel the room around me. i wake up slowly, like easing out of a coma again in july when the water’s warmest, at low tide you can walk on the beach and find jellyfish lying on the sand, tangled in themselves. as children we swam in the warm bath of the gulf and didn’t feel the sting until we came to shore—maybe it’s the salt that softens it. the red lines on our arms and legs didn’t burn enough to deter us and we forgot them, eager to swim after they put me under i could hear the nurses laughing and talking in the hallway and my mother telling them to hush, but for her own sake, to calm her fragile nerves. i made my way down a long white corridor, peering into countless doors one by one— i was searching for her but she didn’t appear. i asked, where are you? she said shhh and i could only follow her voice in the gentle gulf of mexico we perched on giant inner tubes. i wore a braided leather bracelet with red and teal beads that i’d bought at some generic souvenir stand during a three week road trip out west. it was precious to me, softened from sun and seawater with no clasp, just a tight knot. i assumed it would be on my wrist forever. but suddenly it felt like something was missing and i saw it laying on the rubber like it had been placed there, untied but unlost, and within the circle of the inner tube two tiny jellyfish were revolving like two soft moons in that dream state i felt my father’s hand in mine. we were rotating like planets in deep space and i kept thinking don’t let go, i might vanish in the dark! but he was there when i opened my eyes, wearing that same old blue and green flannel. he still had hands that look like mine and he smiled at me, relieved, like welcome back 220221 what's it to you? who go blather from