Breathing Out
I rowed for an hour,
ate take-out from a good Japanese spot.
Read a journal from decades ago and wept.

A journey home pelleted by freezing rain
on the Harley
crossing the long Susquehanna bridge.
A high wind tried to push me into the next lane.
Maria sat me down when I finally made it home.
Call your mother, she said.

That seafood joint in Ship Bottom.
We ate crabs, drank Sol beer,
walked towards the steel mast of the shipwreck
buried on the beach.

He would soon be buried like that– my father—
Free, finally, of having to hide from him, pretending not to hear
when he called, like my mother and my brother.

I never really knew why until I read his love letters to his girlfriend years later.
That’s how I learned my father could love.
How I held my breath when he cracked down the hallway past my room.

Lord of Lies
If you knew me between fifteen and thirty-five,
I’m sorry.
There is a part of me that is just bad,
made on a Monday after a holiday weekend.

This part I keep secret from those who know me now.
Everything was sabotaged by those monstrous, fantastical lies that made me out to be
other than I was.
Because I felt I had to be other than I was.
I told dozens of lies every day to support the lies,
(at least the ones I could remember)
I’d told the day before.
That’s a lotta lies.
A Lord of Lies.

The solitary, trapdoor life was mine.
Opened, swoosh down dark.
The little devils made a nest for me.
Yes, my mouth would say, I was Bond, James Bond!
Signing contracts in blood:
I’ll kill myself if I’m found out.

I did admit my crimes, one by one to the victims, my lovers, my friends.
The people who’d thought they were close to me.
Linda cried and cursed my soul.
Oh that, George said, I never believed you anyway.

Caring is the core value of my profession.
The old bastard couldn’t believe they’d really done it,
left him at the Home in a room the size of a one car garage,
with a roommate who snored like a train.
Call my wife, call my wife!

Like she hadn’t put him there.
She told us not to let him call.
He screamed Help me from 6 to 930 when he finally fell out.
NO, I will not take my meds!
He was fine before the meds.
Ask anybody.

The other nurses
Wes fell down the last couple of steps.
Crashed on his side on the carpet.
I’m okay, I’m okay.
Then a look at my face.
Am I okay?
We were on the way out to the car
to drive to the airport in Anchorage.
His flight home.

A couple week later I was sitting at the nurse’s station,
In the Mat-Su ED
when a bearded man, tall, in an old suit,
started talking to me.
A country preacher, he asked if he could pray with me,
and laid it on thick about giving strength to the caregivers.

Twenty minutes later Acacia called me,
Told me Wes was gone.
I never cried, but my face was wet all afternoon,
and the other nurses covered for me.