Diana Darby ** "I V" ** Intravenous

Finding Max

Finding a home for Max
while the blood still flows.
Last night
stained sheets
heart shaped
blood.
Cramping and bleeding
and dreams of what might have been.
I dreamed of new parents for Max
and how empty my den would be without him.
I told my therapist I didn’t want to keep him,
but I don’t think that’s true.
I told her I wanted to write
and be alone
but I don’t think that’s true.
For too long I have thought that the only way to have my life
was to be alone,
to keep everything away.
Love.
Children.
Even a wandering dog.
I told myself that I cannot have
if I want to be.
Great artists live in isolation
with commitments to no one
right?
They observe the world but don’t take part in it.
They are forever on the sidelines watching
with saucer-like eyes.
Everything is fodder for their next story.
The waiting room of girls,
stupid and uneducated.
The Southern kitchen of pies.
The pale walls of rest homes.
The neglected animals waiting to die.
The neighborhood scandal.
The missing dentures left on the elevator floor.
The yellow rose put out in the foyer to honor the dead.
Everything is something.
I think about Trouble
up on the hill,
the grass growing thicker over him day after day.
I think about how many months it has been
and how much it still hurts.
I think about my life,
all that I want for it,
all that it is not.
The new puppy before me.
The man I love.
My heart,
ready to burst with all that I see,
all that I have kept inside.
Perhaps I will keep him after all.