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.)
