Abstract
Trauma
The chipped enamel snap on the man’s collar.
Nineteen years later I can still see it perfectly.
It is all I remember of the incident.
I stared until my world became that tiny disc of metal,
let his voice devolve to hornet’s buzz,
somehow remembered not to lock my knees
even though I couldn’t feel them. My fingers
were somewhere else gripping tightly enough
to bleed green sap through white mesh.
Later, I wondered why my hands were stained and aching.
The women in my family clucked. The men smoked
in order to stand outside and say nothing.
Only a stranger knew how to ease the floating balloon
of my awareness back into my too young body.
She pulled me away from well-meaning eyes,
tucked me into the coatroom, made me sit. Breathe.
I fixed you a plate she said. Eat. Here, take these napkins,
we wouldn’t want you to stain your wedding dress.
Prescription
Later under the gleam of the
only necessary light in the
house, while your frozen dinner
rotates itself warm in the microwave,
you will decant a careful
dab of salve and rub it in the
cat’s ear, you will cut a
speck-sized pill in half, and in
half again, will crumble the
dust into the cat’s food, will
marvel that something so tiny can
keep two creatures alive.