NETTIE ELISE
I am still five,
left knee
scabbed over.
The one true friend I’ve had for most my life is Lamby.
He was one of the toys that my parents gave me as a infant. He was one of the first toys I ever had. I know because one of my baby photos is of me and him side by side. We were almost the exact same size at the time.
I’ve had him my whole life. Every night when I went to bed. I would press my lips to his forehead and wish him goodnight. Whenever the tears from my eyes couldn’t help but pour out. I hugged him close and buried my face in his fur. For every milestone of my life, Lamby has been there.
He’s old now of course. 15 years without repair is wound to cause some damage. The threading on his mouth is coming apart. One of his eyes is slightly loose. And his fur is not as white as it once was. Things change.
Like when we got a new dog for example. We got Stanley, a golden doodle who’s probably just a poodle in disguise. He’s nothing like our old dog, Bernie. Bernie was always calm if not slightly anxious at all times. Meanwhile Stanley is an oafish 6 month old puppy whose favorite things to do are causing chaos and ripping up stuffies. So when he began wanting to sleep in my bed. I put Lamby up.
I was going to just put him in a drawer with all of my other stuffed animals that I didn’t want Stanley to eat. But I decided to set him in a seated position on the top shelf of my wardrobe. I have a loft bed so when I look across my room we are eye to eye. He kind of looking like he was standing guard over my room.
Stanley is over two years old now. He’s still a chaotic dick sometimes. But he’s never failed at putting a smile on my face. And Lamby…. Lamby didn’t come down from where I set him on my drawer. He stayed there, always watching, 6 feet above the ground.
I took him down a month ago. Only for a day. It was when my heart felt 10 pounds heavier. And the world felt it had put its hands on my shoulders and pushed me down to the floor. Everything felt simply to much as my chest hurt with every breath I took. And at that time all of the fear I had felt like it was pressing down on my chest. Crushing I held Lamby close as I sat on my floor, feeling the fuzzy rug again my skin. I wanted to go back in time. And let myself relax in the comforts of my childhood.
But I found that his fur felt different than it did before.
A vicious mockery of bone,
Summer
I watched her pull up to the house in her 1967 red oldsmobile cutlass, I could hear the supremes coming through the radio.
She preferred the oldies station to the one telling us we’re going to hell. Hell isn’t some unseen place down underground, it’s right on up the porch and through the screen door. She took my hand and adjusted the bag of groceries on her arm as we ventured inside.
The front yard was littered with dandelions, yellow crowns popped against the verdant landscape.
Autumn
I watched her through the bedroom window.
One at a time she removed shiny bobby pins from her hair, allowing curly salt and pepper tresses to roam free.Arthritic fingers unfastened her nametag and placed it on the vanity. She stared into the mirror.. She was proud once. Long before crows feet and c-sections, drugstore nail polish, home haircuts and overtime shifts.
Behind me the maple trees gave a burlesque show.
Winter
I watched her through the cracked kitchen door.
She was chain smoking virginia slims and circling classified ads. Her oversized t-shirt slid off her shoulder revealing an angular collar bone, bruised with the blue and purple hues of a night sky.
Outside snow collected on the ground, muting the sounds of the city.
Spring
I watch her unpack ceramic doves from a shoebox.
She once told me that they were all that is left of her grandmother. We carefully remove tissue paper and place the birds on the mantle. Even though we’re tripping over cardboard boxes and haphazardly placed furniture, she wants to start with this offering. “This is so that they can watch over us,” she says, while meticulously positioning each dove so that their little beaks point out into the room.
A cleansing rain taps gently on the window, and once again, we begin.
Sleep has broken me
Fears prickle the lighting air
The herbs smell like peace
you drank caffeine and took a nap in the sun,
then the suns rays began to bother you some
there wasn’t 5 positive reactions to every negative one
where there were two now there was one,
aren’t nightmares where you lose someone?
Once struck by lightning-
Who isn’t?
Who should?
Who will?
It makes me want to train up and take off
And search for sand and rail and stone
And say a prayer
To no one and Jack
I’d rather see a chicken hawk and know
Then fade into that awfulness
And where am I and who is this?
Wrap up the anxiety in thin paper
Like a firework and rocket it
Towards an elsewhere that is
Most habitable
And die and die and die
Expectations
Deliver me from here
If you ask me, I will, despite my sense
of awkwardness, deeply rooted by
the long years before you came along.
¿Me sostendrás en tus brazos?
If you ask me with a smile,
the moon reflected in your eyes,
I will, without a second’s thought.
¿Serás mi compañera por un tiempo?
If you ask me with a gentle touch,
fingers barely brushing my cheek,
I will, long after the lights come up.
¿Me amarás todos nuestros años?
If you ask me, a laugh on your lips
from the joy of finding us together,
I will, my heart keeping time with yours.
¿Quiere usted, por favor y gracias?
