BINGO
I find her in back, mid-game
around the table, playing
two cards at once.
O-9, N-17, G-46…
Mini packets of Cracker Jack
are today’s prize. She has won
three already. Her sweet tooth, suppressed
for decades, now thrives on jelly beans
and ice cream. She doesn’t remember
it’s junk we don’t eat in this house.
As cards are called… B-29. I-43. N-17…
she full-on concentrates. Not long ago,
when invited to play, she had sneered,
For losers. It was awful
when, between reading the Times,
completing the Sunday crossword
and discussing politics, she could still track
her memory loss, could still reflect
on her own mind. Now, like the child
she never allowed herself to be, she thrills
over a complete row of plastic coins.
It should break my heart. But
it’s so much easier to love her
this way.
MANSION
Fifty-two years later, I still dream
of the house where I grew up, its pitched
roof, mock-Tudor gables, and wainscoted walls.
Thick spring-green shag suffocated
fine oak floors; heavy yellow brocade humiliated
the view of Lake Michigan with her tormented
moods. Given life and left to figure it out,
we well-off, at-risk children fostered avoidance;
we seized what space we could for ourselves,
which, despite its size, was never enough.
Deprived of protection, we stashed secrets
in walk-in closets and yawning attic
annexes, hid hopes inside the drafty shafts
of disabled dumbwaiters. Unschooled
in the ways of rage, brothers became
autodidacts of abuse. Pleas and protests echoed
off leaded stained-glass and high-beamed ceilings.
Foreboding closed my throat like the swinging door
between kitchen and formal dining room where I hid
to cry. Bedrooms were no barrier to the threat
of absence. Bruises barely hinted at the depth of harm.
My older sister modeled love in the updated kitchen
where orange-and-yellow daisy wallpaper lied
about the dangers lurking upstairs. I watched her feed
our Great Danes ground beef, cooked hot and sizzling,
mixed into kibble with her bare hands, distributing pink
juice evenly, marbled linoleum floor slick with drool.
(continued)
(Cohen, Mansion, page 2, new stanza)
Where she learned to nurture, I cannot say. She became
a mother whose grown children still break her heart
in big and small ways every day. I remain childless
by choice, unpartnered by preference, a student
of my upbringing. But so was she. Maybe our education
doesn’t explain her grief-laden choices any more
than my own. My black Lab and I are the same
age in dog years, her perfect love guaranteed
to leave me before I am ready. Every day,
she teaches me that the space that is mine to fill
is small indeed, and this is good news,
though I have yet to claim it.
THE RED LINE
Since you left, I have spent days gazing through glass
at the blazing Japanese maple, at the sparrows in the beech,
at the squirrels in the feeder foraging for nuts.
Come sundown, the rat ambles up, fat and slow; doesn’t flinch
when I knock to scare him off. He lives under the deck. I’ve tried
baffles and traps, ammonia spray and high-pitched ultrasonic waves.
He always returns, like the song I loathe and can’t stop hearing—
the one about the serial killer, the one I asked you to stop playing.
You’d make grotesque gestures instead of dance, mouth words
instead of sing. I teased you about your sublimated rage and your fetish
for violent death. We never fought, but used compromise like a weapon.
You shaved your beard. I dyed my gray hair. You quit inside smoking.
I cut drinking to weekends. Recently, you said I was foolish
to think that there was only one rat, that if I was serious,
I should put out poison. But first I would have to stop feeding the birds.
It came as a surprise to us both
when I told you that was
the one thing I was unwilling to do.
THERE IS YET TIME
We stand together in great darkness, some distance
apart on the beach, to wait for sunrise. First a hint
of not-quite-night, a mirage perhaps, whisper
of color, blue maybe, maybe. A pastel hush
of lavender in a skyward streak that a moment
ago was not there. The sand is hard as a sidewalk.
My toes and fingers sting in the eye-watering wind.
Laced ice kisses the shore. An apricot-orange stripe
appears as a reward. Being human, we want more:
to cheer, applaud. Instead, slate-gray clouds blur
the horizon. Those who’d come for evidence
that, forget yesterday, today is another, return,
disappointed, to their cars. I get it. And I’m also relieved
when they leave like guests after the party is over.
The beach belongs to me and my dog, who wants
her stick thrown again. Fetch, return, the point of life
being whatever is happening now—a botched sunrise
on Lake Michigan as a winter storm rolls in. It’s the peril
and cringe of exposure, the balm and dread of being alone.
It’s the squirm and scrape and ache of making selfish
choices. I cannot be the only one with a voice inside
that says, “I don’t have to,” after I’ve already said I would.
I think I believe there is not enough of me to share.
What if I’m wrong?
Maybe that is why I am restive as a cloud churning
hot and cold, braced for lightning.
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