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Posts Tagged ‘misophonia’

The World Made Possible 

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on August 30, 2026| 5 Comments »


 
You would think only my ears went for a walk,
because all I could focus on this morning was 
the constant putter and drone and rumble and whine
of the steady stream of cars on the highway below.
My ears were bothered. Mightily so. Bothered
enough they drowned out the woodsy scent 
of spruce and the dry earth perfume of late summer
so I could focus on a backfiring engine.
Bothered enough I had to force myself to notice
how soft the trail was underfoot, how easy it felt
to stroll on the flat surface. Had to force myself
to see how some leaves in the understory were 
already turning red, how beautiful they were, 
how good the warm sun felt on the bare skin
of my arms, how a crisp breeze made
my arms rise as if in praise to receive a brief
and welcome chill. Surrounded by so much
beauty, it’s a wonder I could be fussy at all, 
but wow, was I fussy as those cars roared by 
and I dreamed of a different, better trail where
I wanted to be right then, some other trail where
I heard only birds or wind or blessed nothing.
Hours later, sitting on the couch, it’s obvious 
what I heard loudest was not traffic, but my own
fussy thoughts as I longed the world to be different
than it was. By some grace, a sweet self-compassion 
floods me, quiets me, stills and softens me, 
helps me befriend myself just as I am, a human 
who is sometimes fussy, sometimes compassionate.
For a grounded moment, I am so content I think 
a whole highway could thunder right through me, 
and I might just be okay. 
 

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The Misophonic Poetry Teacher Is Confronted by the World

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on October 1, 2024| 17 Comments »


 
 
I would rather not listen to the dehydrator fan
as it hums in the back room, a sound
some might call white noise, but
I hear it as if it’s neon bright whirring inside me,
as if I, too, am being dried
like thin slices of Bartlett pear,
as if I, too, am losing all my juice
and becoming a shriveled version of myself.
And now the roar of a distant plane layers
above the dehydrator hum like a rogue choir member
with poor pitch insisting on a solo.
Enter the crinkle of the chip bag
as my good husband comes into the kitchen
to become a human vector for crunching.
And now it’s all assault: the cat as she mewls,
the lumber trucks thundering by like subwoofers,
the gurgle and burble of the fish tank pump—
and I’m the fool who minutes ago said to the class,
Let’s be receptive and hear with our whole body,
believing I might fall more in love with the world
just by listening into this moment like the poet
we just read who wrote about the sweet communion
she achieved just by quietly listening to the bees
as they swirled around her in a baptism of holy buzz,
but damn, it’s so loud, and overwhelmed
with the racket of it all, I whisper-shout oh fuck it,
joining my curse to this collective clamor of thwack
and drip and rumble and tick, and I’m part
of it all, though not how I’d planned, invited in
by each thing relentlessly singing itself into being,
all of it beckoning me, too, to sing, sing, sing.

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