We are past the time of counting months.
2 years.
24 months.
104 weeks.
730 days.
2 years.
I still think of him everyday, but it is not the same. It is
now in brief memories rather than great sadness.
The sadness comes in buckets but only so often—it’s as if I
build sandcastles out of my joy, my life, my moving on, and the tide wipes them
down to thick, bumpy dirt.
Funny how the sad is so timely as the tide.
Our life molded around rooms,
whichever had a television and a chair and a light
for when it got dark and a flashlight
for when the power went out, and the storms
knocked out the satellite.
And there was the room in the basement,
musty and dark, even with a light,
because there were no windows,
and there were no games or toys:
just us and some bar stools
and a fireplace that hadn’t been lit
since 1973 when the avocado shag
was hip and clean and intact.
And there was the room with the puppies:
the garage that held everything
but cars. And the newspapers on the cement
slid under scratchy little paws,
crusted in yellow and scent-stained
to match their bums and the fur between their toes,
and, thank god, you never had to see
Mama Pup get old and sick.
But there was the room at your grandma’s house
with the small closet
that barely fit us both, but we went in anyways
and I laughed at how funny you looked,
and we went outside and smoked
tree-twig cigarettes
and put them out
in tree-trunk ashtrays.
There was the room at my house
where we sang “I Got You, Babe,”
and Sonny never sounded so terrible
because you never hit a single note,
and Cher couldn’t stop laughing,
but we were both silent
the instant the door would open
--our fun was our own.
And there was the room at state school
where you broke the rules,
and I got my first taste
of adulthood because I drove three hours to see you.
And it was worth it. And you were happy there.
And I was jealous that you could be happy
somewhere without me.
And then you got sick.
And we weren’t in familiar rooms
in our familiar places of ‘home.’
And we didn’t sing Cher.
And I smoked real cigarettes.
And there weren’t any puppies or barstools,
but we had the television, flickering
a reflection in the window.
And there was the room in the hospital
where you had no voice, and everything
was white except the veins in your eyes
and the silvery drip from the IV,
and I laid on your bed, and I didn’t listen
when the nurse told me not to.
And there was the room in the other hospital
where we watched movies
until the nurse gave your medicine to sleep,
but you were awake when we heard
the uninterrupted beep next door,
and the woman wailing, even though visiting hours
were long over. The nurse shut your door
when they pulled the gurney into the hall,
but I watched through the blinds.
And there was the room in the other other hospital
where I heard your uninterrupted beep,
and I left before they wheeled you away,
but I remember the sun felt different
when I walked outside,
as if bad things couldn’t happen on a sunny day.
But they do.
And there was the room in the building without a name
where it smelled like warm hospitals and stale roses,
and they put make-up on your face and hands
and made us stand next to you for hours
and watch everyone cry,
but it only made me cry harder,
and it only made you get colder.
Then they closed the lid.
And there were no more rooms.
