Week 14

I wish I could tell you
what you make me feel.
I wish I could take all the feelings
I have ever felt
and place them in your palms
and watch you delicately absorb them
through the pads in your fingers.
I would see it in your eyes,
you would understand the love I have
for my cat,
for my sister,
for my friend.
And then I would watch you get confused,
"That hurt you?" you would ask,
and I would nod,
and you know why it would be hard for me
to explain why exactly
but it did what it did.
And you would see the tears I cried
and cried and cried
and you would maybe understand why I am the way I am.
You would reach out and touch me
and tell me that I was brave
and I would shyly deny it,
but you would already know that because you
would know that I never feel very brave,
only reckless with myself,
but I guess true bravery isn't much more or much less.
You would kiss the corner of my eyes,
my forehead,
my lips
and would squeeze my hands and give me
all those feelings back.
It's a lot to carry I know,
the secrets of all those people,
including myself,
including you.
And I would graciously accept
since even though they were not mine
they belonged to me,
my gift,
my curse.
And you would fall so much more in love with me
and hold me at arms length
for the fear that in your sleep,
I may transfer some of them to you
to make it easier for me.
It doesn't work like that.
This is mine to bear alone
and maybe God's.
You are just another set of tears waiting to happen.

Week 13

"I'm seeing someone."
The words echoed in the quiet car,
"I knew this was coming," he said,
his voice broke,
my heart broke.
This was one battle I could not fight with him,
this was one cross that he had to carry
on his own.
I wish I could help him.
I did love him, do love him.

My friends said,
"The ship has sailed,"
but the ship never left the bay.
Instead it rested and rotted
and fell apart,
yet the skeleton remained somewhat intact
so if you walked by, you could say,
"That was a great ship,
I wonder what happened."
I wonder what happened too.
Why was I not good enough when I was there?
Why is hindsight the only time he cared?

Week 12

In Neurology

She leans over and kisses him
before she goes home
to her empty house.
There used to be children,
dogs,
parents.
Then there was just her and him,
now it's just her.
He was just trying to make the yard look nice
for his grandson,
the tender age of 22,
that's when the hand of God
briefly reached down
and suddenly he couldn't walk anymore.
As she drives home,
she thinks about the vows
she uttered forty years ago.
They weren't just words,
they were alive
in room 3610
in neurology.

Week 11

"I miss you,
even when I'm sober,"
he said,
as if that was what love was.
Maybe it was.
Who am I to say that he didn't love me?
That he didn't fantasize about
holding my hand,
kissing my forehead,
giving me my three little children.
Or maybe
he was just drunk and lonely.
These things are better left as they are.
I never picked up the phone.

In the Distant Past

Things weren’t very specific
when I was in labor,

yet everything was
there, suddenly: all that

my body had known,
even things I’d only been

reminded of occasionally,
as when a stranger’s scent

had reminded me
of someone I’d known

in the distant past. The few
men I’d loved but didn’t

marry. The time, living
alone in Albuquerque,

when I fainted in the kitchen
one morning before work

and woke up on the floor,
covered in coffee. Finally.

it was coming. It was all moving
forward. Finally, it was all going

to pass through me. It was
beginning to happen

and it was all going to happen
in one single night.

No more lingering
in the adolescent pools

of memory, no more giving it
a little more time to see

if things would get better
or worse. No more moving

from one place to the next.
Finally, my body was all

that had ever been given
to me, it was all I had,

and I sweated through it
in layers, so that when,

in the end, I was finally
standing outside myself

and watching, I could see
that what brought me

into the world was pulling
you into the world,

and I could see that my body
was giving you up

and giving you to me,
and where in my body

there were talents, there
were talents, and where

there were no talents,
there would be scars.

Carrie Fountain

Ray at 14

Bless this boy, born with the strong face
of my older brother, the one I loved most,
who jumped with me from the roof
of the playhouse, my hand in his hand.
On Friday nights we watched Twilight Zone
and he let me hold the bowl of popcorn,
a blanket draped over our shoulders,
saying, Don’t be afraid. I was never afraid
when I was with my big brother
who let me touch the baseball-size muscles
living in his arms, who carried me on his back
through the lonely neighborhood,
held tight to the fender of my bike
until I made him let go.
The year he was fourteen
he looked just like Ray, and when he died
at twenty-two on a roadside in Germany
I thought he was gone forever.
But Ray runs into the kitchen: dirty T-shirt,
torn jeans, pushes back his sleeve.
He says, Feel my muscle, and I do.

Dorianne Laux