In the Event

(c) 2017

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 recedes.
If I am 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.
When lighting hits, know it illuminates
some truth I never considered.
When the car collides, I finally feel my body.
The avalanche grinds me home.
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 because I was never a tree.
In your own darkness, know
that I could never have loved you more.
Go, love someone like that. As though
love is brightest, when it is chiseled out of grief.