Route 66

My life has turned into a wait and wonder, and worry, ‘why’.
A do nothing bus ride full of screaming people
piled on thick as meringue
unable to fight their way out.
A wheel-chaired Korean Veteran
puffing himself up against the world
fighting with some woman
three rows back.
A shit-filled diaper
help-less to be changed,
no matter how loud the cries.
More and more they come.
The feet.
The hands.
The eyes.
The mouths.
All cussing the same driver.
And still, I haven’t arrived.
I watch the street signs.
The lip-stained billboards.
The high-heeled leopard strutting her way
across Michigan Avenue.
The bagged and bag less.
The hungry and well fed.
All begging to get off
the damn bus.

Before The Phone Rang

There is nothing I can do.
Now that he is in a hospital bed with tubes and needles sticking in him.
He is pale and sweaty and vomited.
They are trying to force fluids into him, trying to bring him back. 
I am hundreds of miles away
thirty-two floors up,
watching the waves lap at the shore,
and worrying.
This afternoon,
I lay on the table with needles in me,
trying to relax. Everything bothered me.
The wind blowing in through the open window.
The music in the distance.
The needle in my leg kept aching while the ones in my ears kept itching.
I felt pinned down, panicked,
the opposite
of what was supposed to be happening.
When it was over,
I didn’t get the “relaxed-high” I usually get.
I sat on the dark wooden bench
outside my room and put on my tennis shoes.
A few moments later,
my cell phone rang.
A nurse from my father’s assisted living facility
was calling to tell me the paramedics had just arrived
and were taking him to the hospital.
I don’t know if that’s why I couldn’t relax,
or not, but I think
some part of me
knew something was wrong
even before the phone rang.

The Drake

I’m sitting on the red sofa.
Back curved,
legs crossed
like a twisted pretzel
listening
to the white noise of Lake Shore Drive.
This morning I passed an old black man
on a bike.
His face was etched with years,
carved like a fine wooden bowl.
Each groove a testament
to his every breath.

Letting The Earthworms Starve

I think about death,
like lips curled round a plum
taking in all its flavors.
When I was nine and my grandmother died
I kissed her forehead as she lay in her coffin.
I hadn’t expected her to be
so cold and hard,
so unforgiving.
After I touched her, I cried,
and didn’t want to ever
die.
I didn’t ever want to feel
like that.
I wanted a way out, of this body,
without dying,
but how could I get out without
dying?
There was no way out but through death,
and yet,
I couldn’t stand the thought of dying.
I was mad at my parents for ever having had me.
Didn’t they know they had sentenced me to death?
I couldn’t make sense of it.
The circles in my brain
went round and round.
For months it was all
I could think about,
crying in the kitchen,
and in my bed at night,
and at school on the playground.
While other children played,
I thought about death.
Being buried beneath the ground with the earthworms
eating my flesh.
Screaming with no one to hear me.
Feeling suffocated
in the dark,
locked
in my tiny box
alone.
I thought about death so much,
I made myself sick.
I vomited.
Then one day, I stopped thinking about it.
I put it out of my mind.
Recently, I have found myself thinking about death again.
Not in the same terrified way I did as a child,
but as a woman
seeing my life pass quicker than I had ever imagined.
I know, now, I am moving towards death
like a swimmer caught in a riptide
being pulled out to sea.
I cannot fight against it.
I cannot swim harder than its pull.
Death will win.
But I also know I cannot just float
and let myself be taken.
I cannot sit idly by and wait for the inevitable.
I must fight.
I must forget what awaits me
and throw myself into every second of this life.
I must let the earthworms starve.