Take me home
I.
The Patapsco is calm, steady the way
one might be in a crisis. The skyline glints
and flickers, lighting up like the inside of a geode
cracked open. Head lights little orbs
dash eastbound as smoke billows and power fails.
It came down a bridge
of sand. Grains of light dissolving
into the river like sugar
into black tea, lost to a ship in the dark.
II.
My aunt lives with Parkinson’s and dementia
and barely any teeth. Her eyes two
dried-up honeycombs, paper thin artifacts.
She is restless in her legs, her left arm both
rigid and wandering index finger pointed the way
a teacher may have scolded her
when teachers did that sort of thing. Her words are
my words and so I must craft every question
before I ask: I see you
are shifting in your chair. Can I help you?
Among all her confusion she hides
a joke or two. Usually at my father’s expense.
But mostly she cries:
mygod,mygod,mygod I can’t do this,
mygod,mygod,mygod I used to be beautiful,
mygod,mygod,mygod take me home.
III.
And the water recedes the way
a father takes back tears. The ground
is silt and sewage and we are mudskippers
dragging along, slick with anger. Where are the watches
and wallets thick with school pictures and funeral cards?
The door frame memorialized in tick marks, the pill case of baby teeth,
the clay bull and photo stacks sticky with heat. And what about
the stain on the carpet? Tear off our clothes. Pack
mud in the wounds.
