Saturday, June 4, 2016

What I Did Not Tell You

1

At the yellow house on our street –
the one where the son once sold crack
out of his converted garage window,
his driveway like a drivethru,
a couple weeks into your hospital stay,
his sister wandered off from bathing her 10-month old.
Maybe to text someone,
or probably to bitch about how absolutely bored
to tears she was, or maybe just to stream
a movie, quien sabe? To cut to the quick,
the 10-month old drowned
in just a tiny bit of soapy water.
The paramedics tried, but no.
All the family stood in their front yard
of hard dirt and high weeds –
and wailed and wailed.

2

It sucks to get old.
Our family doctor, around my age,
was going through something.

Dyed the gray out of his hair,
shaved his mustache,
pumped iron in earnest.
Even I noticed. Surreptitiously,
I checked his wedding band.
Still on, but just barely.

You see, he texted our 28-year old daughter,
nothing gross, no pics of his package,
just an “innocent” invite to coffee.

While you were splayed out
on yet another hospital bed,
I phoned him from your bathroom.

When I told him he lost us as patients,
he started crying, honest-to-God tears,
telling me how sorry he was

doing this when he knew
how afraid I was for you.
I will never forgive him those tears.


(Blogger's note: This poem was originally published in Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review last month.)