NOTHING is LOST

Others Have Not Been So Lucky

I have worn my hair the same way since I was a teenager, not giving in to the customs of adulthood. I have no time for cutting and trimming and behind the ears shaving with a razor sharp enough to slice me to ribbons. It is far less perilous to leave it be and pay the consequences of not conforming to custom. If necessity should have it, which it may, given the vagaries of my existence, a time may come when I will need to attend to this, but for the time being I choose not to do so. Hair has become a social issue, as are good looks and the right shoes. If I could I would wear neither shoes nor good looks and be done with it once and for all. But as I cannot, I am fated to an indifference that makes life a bad memory. Don’t ask me why it is, it just is, so settle for that or keep your gore hole shut. I have little patience for yammering and bad manners, or people who ask me for a cigarette when clearly I have no intention of giving them one. They are blameful. I am not. I fear nothing but not fearing anything at all. If I were fearless I would surely be dead, rotting in some lime pit with arms and legs severed from joints and hipbones. God has seen to that. Others have not been so lucky.

Written after seeing a frail, elderly woman connected to an oxygen tank waiting her turn in the waiting room of my doctor’s office.

Midwifery Rags and Tubing

Lug eels sleeved into the swell of her nose, midwifery rags and surgeon’s tubing staying blood the consistency of turned milk

And the smell of unhurried death and dead leaves, and eyes that remember carrousels and saltwater taffy chewed white to maggots

And the barrow of her dress codling funeral bone, legs like spindle wood tucked into the hove of unwashed stockings

And my heart breaks for her, my legs cowed with life and last resorts, and second-thoughts never thought or remembered

And my doctor summons me in to see if I need a second script to stay the pain that keeps me awake at night, thinking of legs, midwifery clothe

and taffy chewed white to maggots