Prayers to St. Michael

In the dark I like to read his mind
But I’m frightened of the things I might find…

“Hush hush, keep it down now…

So I get a text from a friend that said, “Hey, it’s Michael”.

I didn’t know what to say since I know about a dozen Michaels, so I played his guessing game…

Is your last initial “J”?

“No”
“Michael P?” (And I really hope it’s not this Michael since I almost had to file a restraining order.)

“No, try again.”

Since I was helping my sisters and mother with Easter dinner, it took me a couple minutes between each guess. So I tried one more time before I put the phone down for good.

I try so hard not to get upset because I know all the trouble I’ll get.

“Is this Michael R**d?

“Yes.”

It was Michael the police officer. Not Michael, my dissertation adviser, or my film buddy. I guess I should have counted my blessings it was him. I wished him a pleasant Easter and told him I had to go.

Oh he tells me tears are something to hide and something to fear…

And I try so hard to keep it inside so no one can hear…

In Hebrew, Michael means "who is like God" (mi-who, ke-as or like, El-deity), which in Talmudic tradition is interpreted as a rhetorical question: "Who is like God?" (which expects an answer in the negative) to imply that no one is like God. In this way, Michael is reinterpreted as a symbol of humility before God.[5- (lifted from Wikifeet)

The night of Tuesday, April 26 was one of the more awful nights I had in a year. I had about a dozen deadlines to meet with the dissertation, student papers, and plans for constructing a new home on the now empty plot of land I owned after the city tore the old house down. At some point, after lying perfectly still in my bed for hours procrastinating, willing myself to move some part of my body into action (around 2:00 .a.m.), I gave up, took a shower, then tried to sleep because, in the end, nothing would get finished anyway.

Hush hush…keep it down now…

I was tempted to take swig of NyQuil, but I had four hours until I had to get up for work and would be too drugged up. So I spent the next few hours, as Jacob, the mythical patriarch did, wrestling the Michael, the Archangel, trying to put my worries aside, closing my eyes futilely in hopes that maybe one hour sleep would come. And it really did feel like I was in a wrestling match, tossing and turning, sitting up then lying back down. Finally, I reached something like a dreamy wakefulness for a half hour before I put on clothes, grabbed my cell phone, and went to work with a backup plan to cancel my hours and come back home to get rest.

I taught for two hours from 8:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. and got promptly home by 10:20 a.m. I pulled off my clothes, got in bed, only to find myself looking at the dust that accumulated on my ceiling fan. Fuck this shit. I got a fat tumbler of 151, sipped it down with ginger ale and then Mr. Sandman finally arrived. I blissfully blacked out for 8 hours.

He wants me but only part of the time

He wants me if he can keep me in line

The end of the week and the end of the winter semester came to a close. I was looking forward to three and half months of an almost non-existent teaching load (thank dog for online courses) and the finish line of my dissertation. I slept so well those few days and the weekend without a care in the world.

Hush, hush… shut up now… voices carry...

And then my weekend mellow turned bitter in the skimming of a few words. It was just a brief email, only the slightest of inferences, but a casual invitation to fuck. I suppose the bitterness wasn’t so much in the invitation, but the fact I was only a mere dollop of fudge on a sundae he had already enjoyed earlier that day. Have the milky-white pristine girlfriend in the afternoon, and when the sun goes down find a black piece to suck your cock.

He said SHUT UP, he said SHUT UP, OH GOD CAN’T YOU KEEP IT DOWN?!

I keep getting these silly ideas in my head…that I’m human..that I’m a real person…an intelligent woman…but his words always bring me back to what I am in his eyes, a piece of trash to discard by the road.

And now I know why I can’t sleep..it’s because I want so much to cry and can’t because if I do my tears will take me to a place I can never return from.

I wish he would let me talk.