Coming to My Senses
I drive back and forth over the causeway and at the crest of the cement wave,
my nerves judder before I touch down. Here I am in Florida again against
all I desire—my mother’s chemo done, words wiped from her mouth
like solvent on graffiti, memories half-corroded and untethered from time.
She has resigned from her life and waits in the long queue that snakes
toward oblivion. Her one dachshund is so old its ghost trembles at the well
of its eyes, the other still barks at me when I come. I have descended again
a causeway into chaos I can’t make order of, so I give myself over to it.
I drive my mother through wetlands and find wilderness at the tip of the island—
hot orange wildflowers along a deserted road, cormorants lifting from reeds,
gators rippling clouds floating on estuaries otherwise like glass. I look for
comfort in what can move me just a little: mockingbird on a powerline
cycling through an endless jukebox of songs, even the smell of lavender
shampoo in the hostel where I stay so I can slip a whisp of hair
under my nose and breathe and breathe and breathe. Late at night,
I graze candy set out for guests, sampling until I’m so full I feel empty.
*
In Limbo
Nothing makes me happy anymore, he says, even the pleasure
of Legos disassembling. At fifteen, he’s trying to find
the building blocks of bliss while robots on his shelf
acquire a thin film of dust. I wish he’d disappear
into books as I did, though we told our own stories
at keg parties in the woods—warm foam filling
Solo cups, flashlights strobing through trees while
teens shrieked in the forest of their smashed
innocence—the kind of insanity lit by reds and blues
from cop cars making a disco of drinking, fucking
and joy riding, as if puking on pine needles and doing
donuts in a parking lot are akin to childhood wonder.
My son is too careful to burn boyhood down, too naïve
to carry a rubber in his wallet, and he can’t fathom
how to ford the no man’s land between action figures
and adult joy, whatever that means. I can’t explain
the smallness of it—bees’ cargo pockets stuffed
with pollen, perfect leaf drawn in the froth of a latte,
song shouted from the open window of a car, a languid,
tongued kiss. I don’t want to tell him how, from where
he stands, his future may look elaborate, like hand-tatted
lace woven with the story of civilization, but my vantage
reveals it’s all just mating and children’s drawings
lining a hallway that leads to the abyss. How could I
when he says he’s taking it slow with a girl in karate
who gave him a hug? I can only shove my own angst
back into that tangled darkness edging Depew Park,
where some boys I knew died by suicide, snagged
forever in the stasis of the in-between, and I
tell him Hold on. It gets better instead.
*