Читать книгу Dead Girl Dancing - Mike L. Nichols - Страница 12

Would It Be Okay

I get that we are tough,

that we’ll get through this

because, I watched you

gripping the telephone

pressing your forehead against

her nightingale patterned wallpaper

and smiling those exact words

after announcing her passing

to the voice on the other side

but

would it be okay if

for right now I just

didn’t get through this, if

I didn’t even try? And instead, stood

gaping for an hour or for a year,

tumbling down the rabbit hole in Slow-Mo

snatching after her fluttering

hospital gown, falling

through memories: her teaching me

to iron my own shirts, to vacuum, to overlap

each pass, keeping the carpet lines straight.

These little necessities I see, but

I’m still struggling

to get the meaning

in the nightingales’ wobbling song

and

would it be okay if

these uninvited guests got up

from her matched floral print

couch and loveseat,

her cushioned piano bench,

her lattice backed chair set with

tear shaped trickles of lacquer

hardened on each leg,

and wordlessly walked out,

taking their false sympathy and forced cheer,

bouncing and straining behind them

like white and blue helium balloons,

leaving us, unaccompanied, with her absence

and

would it be okay if

I just gave way, collapsed to my knees

on the ceramic tile in front of the

crumb strewn kitchen counter

breaking

into one hundred-thousand

boy shaped pieces

and

would it be okay if

in imitation of the indent

left behind by her withered body

in the rented hospital bed

I arranged myself

splayed out, starfish style

to sink, to drift, to drown

in the unfathomable

sorrow?

because

I know

we are tough

and

I promise to be tough,

later.