Home Schooling for the Dead

A dim, hazy memory of crash carts,
shouted secret codes and an impossible labyrinth
filled with shocking doctors and
magical minefields of intricate minutia.
Sleeping pills, submerged will,
morbid fascination and ambivalent consolation.
Slowly, these things take shape,
coalesce,
form the walls of the world.

They are the time-markers
separating seasons,
the condensed distillation
of her youth.

Childhood is also watching for suspiciously
long sleeved friends in summer seasons,
droopy-eyed stares,
long slurring speeches
and the soft singing of Janis Joplin
albums with grooves nearly worn away by
the heavy rotation.

The worst of it is waiting
for these things,
not watching
in fear or anger or fury or hunger.
It is an anticipation that cuts
its knife blade clear through her,
a gilded edge forged in amalgam
of misbegotten guilt;
a child's greedy grief is
never pure.
She blames herself for the outcome of
such cycles because the
signs are a sickness, and the
sickness is long slow death.

Even as a child she knows that
feels that she should dread these
signals of the times
to come instead of
longing for them
in secretive silence.

But the signs are also relief.

When the signs of Momma's sickness come,
she doesn't know
what to do.
Though she knows already
these episodes end badly,
for the moment there are no shouted
words of disapproval, no hints
of any failure or faults;
there are no harsh punishments
for misdeeds unknown and unseen,
missteps untaken
mistakes reawakened.
There is only the sickness,
and this is a great relief.

Dad's sickness comes more often
but always looks the same
as the time it came before.
Still, he makes less sense
to her, and it will be years
before she begins
to understand why this is so.
She learns to avoid him when
his words mush together,
forgoing the pleasant hum of his
voice addressing
no one in particular
and everyone in easy earshot.
When his voice is soft,
his hands are hard; he is utterly
predictable is his unpredictability.

But the next morning, he is sweet and warm,
snuggled under blankets and squinting
against the daylight. She can curl
up with him and
sleep into the sunset, safe
and satisfied in the knowledge that no one
else dares disturb him
on those endless days-after.
In silence, the room's
a slumbering womb which marks her as
special; sleepy snuggles and stray
murmurs of affection snare her in
a spiderweb of creeping
malevolent secrecy.

Somewhere in the spaces between
the mother and the father,
she learns early that sometimes
the sickness is stealthy death
but it is also salvation.