In the event of an emergency
do not worry about me. Do not
wonder if beams above this basement
studio broke, and I am trapped
by rubble and one-hundred-year-old brick.
Both legs broken, no phone reception,
no phone. I was born trapped;
breathing dust and despair for decades.
Don’t worry if the pier where I work
swept out, and I am chin high
in rising water, watching
the last thin line of air recede.
Buffeted by coffee cups, monitors,
splintered pylons and rats.
Don’t worry. I remembered to designate you
my beneficiary. I updated my life insurance,
wrote a will. I raised you
from the wreckage of my marriage
to give my ghost a good-enough name.
There wasn’t time, there wasn’t reason
to tell my own mother, at last, that I loved her;
I didn’t. Nor a need to call and apologize
to your father that I would never be back.
Marriage was another steel trap,
and once I severed my foot, I felt free.
Don’t wonder if I am praying.
If I am repenting. If I am asking Jesus
to be my personal savior. If I am betting on
a last-second reprieve. If I have hope
for heaven or fear of hell.
Nothing in my life has been that easy.
I couldn’t have lived differently.
My unwanted birth set a trajectory;
your birth set it in stone.
In the quiet aftermath, clouds settle,
blood slows and we are all homeless.
Give the coat off my back to an imperfect stranger.
Plant a lilac bush—
I was never a tree.
In your own darkness, know
that I could never have loved you more.
