Each Time

The first time it happened 

I twisted my leg muscles

I rose from the chair

realized nothing

remembered nothing

Later I would say

I remember

I was reading Sylvia Plath’s poems

finished watching a movie about her

gazing at the cats on the sofa

The second time

I was reviewing the police report.

I did not need to see a doctor.

Gasps in logic

watching them carry the body

away like watching someone

you don’t know getting undressed.

At an age where I should be settled—

own a house, pay a mortgage,

though I wouldn’t have lived on a busy corner.

Worse than a 100 year old plant dying

worse than wondering if it would

ever bloom, hummingbirds pollinating it

on the small porch

white blooms.

Can one ever be satisfied?

Each time I tell people

eyes hungry, questions

“good detail” they burp

like trying on a girlfriend’s clothes

they run throiugh the scenario

and see if it fits.

I want to share

I don’t want to share

Each day clearing the bottom rooms—

kitchen, dining room, and how living room,

I hear the crash—

how much easier it would be now

with nothing in those rooms

to slow it down.

I think of the burger place on Cutting and San Pablo

the Black woman with a white hair net

her son helping out.

Next door the barber with a bobbing bird

in his window—

buildings one

or re-used

then gone.

We would push against the counter

to stand up.

Such a bargain.

Even now, inquiries.

Like my mother’s stroke and six months later

her death, it keeps coming—

different seasons but the same

nausea and unanticipation

no way of pressing a blade

closer, shiny, fixated

alone, a wimpering animal

against the cut.

All at once I felt a snap

and a rush and as if it were

100 below I was shaking.

I could hear my mother’s voice,

“put a sweater on” but I didn’t.

I was crying to live in those

moments, as if a door had slammed

or someone had locked me out

of life. Chest heaving,

my neighbor called—

“stay with me” I said

until I realized I couldn’t hold

the phone anymore.

What would I take?

The cats wouldn’t come into the carriers.

I emerged into the outside

of my skin, the street,

the house like a reptile

regurgitating its meal.

Sirens without noise,

red engine,

white pickup, 

crowd across the street

everything ready to explode

“stand back,” he said, as I filmed

two trucks pulling the criminal truck out of the house.

It would be a week until they bandaged

the house, wound gaping

but not repair it yet

even after a month.

First the abatement

“rip it out” then stabilize.

In a world of dead languages

the same worn phrases used

pain described of a structure taken apart.

A few people were crying, or at least

hands on their faces.

Go away I wanted to shout

and to the man who stepped in front

videoing, blocking me,

it’s me you are taking a part. 

My mind completely mixed up

like a puzzle—what’s first

like an argument about my own identity.

What stability means, in one

moment having to leave, skip to the next

chapter because the reading has been interrupted.