Brainfog
By Vivian Delchamps
*&*
Ampersand face, tell me a story.
Very well: stars and stars and stars and stars and stars and
*&*
Brainfog is a gorgeousness.
Rolling in from mountains, buttering up what I’d rather not see.
I can’t think of the word I’m looking for.
The treatment does it—not the disorder.
Slow,
churning,
butter
made of fog.
Fog twists into bloody wine butter
cream dripping in slow, slow
motion.
Do I sleep or create?
Stop thinking in binaries, they say. Say, “yes, and—”
but there’s only time for one thing.
In two weeks, will I be unrecognizable to myself?
*&*
Ampersands churn my brain into a soggy mass.
I’d better learn to draw butter out of fog—
or else this pain will not hold enough meaning.
It’ll mean I was brainless for nothing if I could not give it all shape put the fog in a box and make it hold something anything else other than what it is and what I am
*&*
Ampersand face tell me a story
stars and stars and stars and
Vivian Delchamps is an Assistant Professor of English at Dominican University of California. She received her Ph.D. in English at UCLA in 2022. Delchamps researches and teaches American literature, primarily focusing on disability studies and entanglements of gender and race. She is also a chronically ill and disabled dancer and poet. She loves books and cats and her favorite symbol is the ampers&.