I accept the shots with grace,
though I wonder if she can see it on my face:
give Anya my regards; I can’t imagine
finding my husband dead, overdosed
on our home’s floor
bad drugs on the market, my partners keep saying
but there’s so much death lately,
I can’t hear a damn thing
.
hiding in the other room,
I listen to them talk
about the man’s tragedy
in my sleep, he cracks my chest
apart with grief; this operation will be brief
I can give him the pump he needs—
it wasn’t his heart that failed, they say,
but the lungs
still, they harvested what they could
if it had been my father
I would have preserved his organs
in jars
I would have scattered his teeth
under every pillow
and slept, one eyelid split
waiting for the fairy charade
from my childhood
so long as he returned
.
I escape the station with little said
and I take my old route home
tires spitting rocks on the dirt road
where I experienced my first heartbreak
(that boy is lucky I didn’t push him into the ragweed)
and when I walked, hollow, back home,
I collapsed into my father’s arms
finally cried to the rhythm
of his callus-cracked hands
patting my back
.
I meet my sister’s cat in the driveway
and I meet my mother in the sunroom
she doesn’t ask, this time, if I’m happy
living alone in Kalamazoo now
the answer to that quest.
alternates daily. Instead, I tell
her about emergency board meetings
about childhood studies & personalities
my new plan, I tell her, is to study
mental illness pathologies
I don’t mention how I sobbed at the stat:
men with borderline personality disorder
are twice as likely to commit suicide than women
.
I haven’t seen the color green even once
in Kalamazoo—
Plainwell is pea & emerald monochrome
(that’s probably why I still consider it home)
and when I fall back into the pool,
I remember last summer, how I’d sit
feet dipped in water, writing poetry
sunning & singing—how much of this year
have I wasted crying
or flushed away with sleeping aids
so as not to experience the pain
of living?
I’m tired of people saying they’re worried about me
.
at noon, I find myself across my father
he doesn’t notice how I stare
and he doesn’t know about the nightmares,
screaming at cardiologists for fucking up
bread & butter procedures
because now Kevin doesn’t have a dad
I still can’t comprehend
how he made it to work this morning,
made it to work without collapsing
at the sight of our ambulances—
what happens if he has to transport
a patient to his father’s death site?
there’s a reason I tread lightly in South Haven
.
when I hand my mother the scissors
she doesn’t hesitate to help me lose the weight
and my housemate doesn’t even notice
when I return home five hours late
I’ve never been so aware of my womb’s
vacancy
I’ve never been so aware of each
blade
in the house
how the edges would shame
my skin into melted butter
I’m not worried about this bleeding hunger
and I’ve got an emptiness no baby could fill
.
I message my brother
guess he called our father,
upset about an unknown number
an unknown caller; days after this strange event,
the hush-hush suicide of his old high school friend
I remember when that boy wanted to take
our sister to his senior prom
he got a foreign exchange student deported instead
my brother didn’t answer that unknown call
another case of guilt-spiked-grief
could he have talked him away from the ledge?
I don’t know what it’s like to lose
friends to suicide
but I know what it’s like to lose
to semi-trucks
I’m not very good at comforting
maybe I’ll say it anyway:
at least he didn’t die
crushed under a four-door vehicle, in torturous agony
or riding motorcross, a skull fracture & head bleed no helicopter ride could remedy—
do you remember what Mr. Grubaugh would say in AP Psychology
about the biopsychosocial theory?
multiple factors contribute to building tolerance to pain
just like how a bee sting hurts more when you’re five
than when you’re life-experienced and fifty
building tolerance
but then again,
I’ve lost a full-grown man to one of those before too
the face of his fiancé still haunts me
whites of her eyes popping & vulnerable
what does cancelling a wedding feel like?
I can only hope I never know the answer to that
Just Thoughts 