folding in on myself.
these unending possibilities
roiling and rolling
roaring and raring
ripping myself wide open
like only we can.
and this is what i have become.
or is this what i’ve destroyed?
How many times have
I too
singed wing on a hot mirage,
have flown wing-scarred straight
to the next one?
..squint into the brilliant winter sun of 1942
Anne Carson, The Glass Essay
Thirteen. I discover a billfold-sized black and white of mom and dad from the 40s. Slightly yellowed, scalloped edges. I eyeballed it like a puppy digging for grubs. Lanky dad’s white T-shirt and Burt Lancaster trousers. His smoldering edge. Mom’s tight polka-dot frock and Cuban-heel stockings. Her chestnut hair bunched into a snood. He had one bare arm around her waist, the other stretched out like heron wings in mid-flight. Jack Kerouac and Rita Hayworth new how to jive.
Sex the open
secret. Dig Gene Krupa
who thumps the snare.
We moved from small town Tennessee to the west side of Chicago. He worked on the 44th floor in the Sears & Roebuck tower as an industrial engineer. Years later, hitchhiking cross country, dropping every other semester out of college, I got hooked on Kerouac’s haiku. Truth is, the steamy rouge was a looker. Thirty years to connect that early snapshot of my Dad to my Kerouac crush.
Volkswagen van floor
senior year sex. His muscles
lit by streetlights.
In Chicago, I can’t remember when he wasn’t bent over like the hunchback of Notre Dame in a plaid business suit. He had a troublesome and haunted countenance that would sometimes dart out of his body. Random streaks of leather belt whippings. A good day when he took the commuter rail at 6 a.m.; the very best when he boarded the last train home.
Who was the tall boy-man was in the moth-eaten snapshot? Did he once love my mom? Take her into his arms with gratitude—or wonder? I suggest to my sister they must have felt a trace of tenderness. She chuckles and says, their only bond was lust.
Youth holds the space
for the sacred and profane.
Aging, you choose the balance.
You think of her every minute
of every day,
but you never speak a word.
You keep the pain to yourself,
because you have to.
You wanted her,
but you couldn’t afford the bills.
For the doctors,
for food,
for her care,
for her life.
You wrapped her up,
left her
and discreetly watched
from a distance,
until a police officer scooped her up,
whisked her into his arms
and mumbled into his radio.
She wasn’t what you wanted,
so you gave her to someone in town
whose job it was
take care of girls like her.
You don’t want to know where they took her
or what they did to her.
You just wanted it over.
You keep living your life
like it never happened.
You hurt constantly.
There’s a hole in your heart where your child
used to be.
You know that she has a better life
without you.
You still hold on to hope that
maybe
one day she will find you.
You never think about her.
You pushed it from your brain.
You wonder if she looks like you.
You wonder where she is.
You don’t want to move
because maybe she still lives in the city
and one day you’ll run into her in the streets
you’ll see yourself in her
and know immediately.
You don’t want to be found.
Your husband forced you to,
it wasn’t your choice.
You were single and unmarried.
You just couldn’t take care of her
on your own.
You wonder what your life would be like now
if she was with
you.
You wonder if your family would accept her.
You wonder who she would be.
You will regret it
until the day that you die.
After she was gone
you stopped eating.
You felt nothing.
You wanted to die.
After she was gone
you went back to work
and made small talk with your co-workers.
You felt nothing.
Later you felt guilt
because you felt nothing about it
at all.
You are glad that you did it.
Every day when you pass by the park,
by a school,
or mothers are walking their daughter down a busy street
you feel a pain deep inside
and your eyes become watery,
but you just keep walking.
When you ask someone how old their child is,
you think about her
and start tabulating in your mind
how old she is now.
What year was it?
It seems so long ago.
It feels so long ago,
like it happened to someone else.
You’re glad that it almost feels like it wasn’t
you.
You enjoy your life
and you’re glad you don’t have to carry around
the weight of it
every day.
It seems like it was yesterday.
It will never stop feeling like an
open
wound.
You wake up each morning
and carry on.
DONG you wake up just in time to hear
the grandfather clock strike
1 in the morning.
When you get to work
you hear DONG DONG DONG
it’s 3 o’ clock you get to work straight away.
Later you hear DONG DONG DONG DONG
DONG DONG DONG it’s 7 in the afternoon–you go
home and go to bed ready to start another day.
What’s on my mind
is a murmuring that can’t be ignored.
It’s a whisper in the gloom of a graveyard,
a slow tease that burns like a match head.
When the fire finally starts–fwump–it’s like the snap of a pillowcase
in the upstairs bedroom, an echo against wood and grain that sends me running. The screen door slamming sounds like a memory:
eight years old and sick of the heat,
fiddleheads between my fingers
at the edge of the lake. Absently scratching
a mosquito bite on my calf with the toe of my shoe,
watching my reflection to see the change,
hoping with a child’s desperation to see a ghostly face
just beneath mine. Waiting for something
out of the ordinary to bring me satisfaction
on a day as plain as the underside of the clouds scudding across the sky,
feeling for something that isn’t there just so I know I’m real.
Frankie rings up my latte at half price,
calls it a “sad person’s discount”
A box of tissues at my desk because
I can’t make it through a Thursday
Once, crossing the street,
a woman in a car stopped at the red light
mouthed:
are you okay
Once, in my car outside the doctor’s office,
a woman passing by put her palms together
and mouthed:
I’ll pray for you
Would you think differently it was your child?
Would you wear the shame like a blanket
or display me proudly like a prize?
Would you still look me in the eyes?
Would you still tell your friends how you are so proud of me?
Would you pray for me?
Would you still ask God to send angels all about me
even if you think he made a mistake making me?
Would everything I have done so far mean nothing in your eyes?
Would you still wish that “all those people” would die off?
Would you answer to your God or does he forgive those who abandon a child they cannot see he has made
he has loved
he has nurtured.
God makes no mistakes
and I doubt he’d start with me.
