TERRIFIC

I hold now to nothing but Allah, bricks and dust,

the house empty and memory just a phase

in yet more phases while you sleep

unencumbered in your sociopathic haze.

Remember the day your boy got his leg

stuck in the fender of an ATV

and I turned and rolled in.

Near the camel souks of Riyadh,

his gasps and terror bled into the sand.

As I knelt by his pale wonderful body

and shushed him like the babe

to whom I’d given birth while you

entertained the nurse with stories

of a woman in stillbirth and her husband

threw the body in the morn into the well

saying, What baby? to her as she awoke,

I gasped and begged for the knife

and as he lay limp and lifeless there

near my worn out old form,

they pumped him full of nitrogen

for days as I woke and traveled to

and from the hospital where I tended

to drunks and drag queens,

there you were hanging onto

your strenuous gaps of good and evil.

And you twisted your face

as you watched me pull his leg free,

inspect his chest where he’d landed

and you complained about my calm

demeanor and I knelt near his

pale wonderful body, his natural grace,

the only peace I’ve ever known

with your species was at his side

in the afternoon naps.

He and I read the Hobbit over a course

of a week or two, Charlotte’s Web

left us weeping and alone.