Just a Limp, and: I heard you muttered R.C.

Just a Limp

If I had to imagineyou—on the table,husked open, peeledback, muscle and tendonshowing, all the layerssliced beneath the skin,the bone, exposed,and the smell it makeswhen sawed apart, smoking,toughly gripped, doctorsheaving limbs—if I had tothink about the metal cup-and-ball replaced, the not-bone, pretending to belongto the body—if I had to thinkabout the sutures, pinchedflesh, raw and purplingalready, squeezed, pressedtogether, pleading againstthe staples, punchedthrough dimples, the longscar, the separation—gaping,accidental, trying too hard,too soon—I might neversleep again. So I pushthe visions away, thinkyour limp is just a limpwhen I see you, because it would break me to thinkthe body that brought meinto this world is broken,reefed apart, stitched backtogether.

I heard you muttered R.C

They say my aunt was grey,thin, sallow, before she almostdied—

ashen-cheeked, not enoughbreath in her. I wonder if her mother,

my grandmother, weeping, sinkingat the thought of burying a child,

remembered her sister, dyingyoung, or maybe the time she was taken

to the sanatorium, alone, if she thoughtshe would die, too. I know the way

all daughters become childrento their mothers, again, when ill,

no matter how old they’ve become,like my grandmother, who will soon

be turning eighty-five. I’d never reallythought of her as a mother, first,

before we were anything, beforewe became, birth after birth, thirteen

in all. We always rallied, but we are notallowed at the hospital, for now,

sisters only—hover, listeningfor the sound that means

she will recover.