Diana Darby ** "I V" ** Intravenous

Miracle Worker

Hanging up from them
I see the world black as Dylan’s Tarantula.
There is no cure.
No brain game
to play to reverse what years have done.
My sister tells me,“I’m out of touch.”
My mother hasn’t bathed in weeks
and my father has started falling.
Every solution I offer her is met with
a hundred reasons why
it can’t be.
But I don’t believe it.
When I was little
growing up in Texas,
I always wished for snow every Christmas,
and every Christmas it was green and dry.
I remember one year
standing at the bathroom sink in our blue bathroom,
praying we’d get snow.
Then we wouldn’t have to go to school
and for once we’d have a white Christmas,
like in the movies.
My sister came in and saw me praying.
She asked me what I was praying for.
I said, “snow.”
She said, “that’ll never happen.”
Two days later it snowed.
I felt lit up inside,
like God had been listening.
Those little white flakes were my sign
that miracles were possible.
I still believe it,
even if nobody else does.
Now if I could just get my mother
to bathe.