He sat
at the short edge of his hospital
bed,
made as soon as his vitals were taken
by the AM nurse,
folded
is the gown, neatly
on one side,
looking all clean and sharp
dressed in his day clothes,
said his roommate,
with his voice rising behind
the curtain,
over the videos of Russian chalk eating.
my jaw is broken,
my tongue is hurt
i bit the insides of my cheeks,
and swallowed a bird.
from January 2025
Our house burned down, but that’s okay.
There are worse things. There is death. There is sickness. There is deadly sickness. Sickening individuals. Deathly decisions and decision makers. There is greed. There is ignorance. Ignorant and sickening decision makers.
Our house burned down, but that was okay.
I cried, ate a bagel, bought a new kettle, cuddled my cat yet again against his wishes. The day rolled, the days rolled, the week rolled, then the weeks rolled. A new page, several, several… more… several, severe all!
Our house burned down, but that’s okay.
We are alive and healthy, our cat a bit slimmer and tiny. We weren’t given any of it anyway. Inch by inch. Each by each by each time and again. My eyes haven’t yet laid on the ashes yet. How many calculations I make:
If my late mom’s earrings were in that one closet, on that one shelf, in that one box, wrapped in cotton padding…
If the walls caved in, if the roof collapsed, if they all turned to ash…
Is a house like spinach when turned to ash? Does a life and its contents shrink when wrapped in fire and engulfed in smoke and scorched into dust? Will I look through 2 inches particles of lead and asbestos and book dust with Holly’s sifter to reach her remains, my remains? Will our safety be somewhere there, choking through what used to be home, my home, our home, my home?
Our house burned down, but that’s okay. That, really, is okay.
So many other houses burned down since then. So many other walls collapsed. So many families broke apart. So many died. So many more dying right now.
Right. This. Now. Flip it.
Right. This. Now.
Our house burned down, but that’s okay. Our neighbors are older. What are they going to do?
Our house burned down, but that’s okay. We are safe and healthy. Our neighbors are older or much younger or much poorer or much sadder or much lonelier. Be grateful, be fucking grateful!
Our house burned down, but that’s okay. I cried but not nearly enough. What are you crying for? For books? Get a Kindle! Get Spotify! Get a fucking cloud and upload all your self and memories. Selfless memories. Nothing to be sad about now.
Now.
Now now. Don’t cry. I said it’s okay. It is okay. Okay, okay.
Friends came bearing gifts, bearing hugs, carrying books, carrying grains, precious grains of rice, grains of truth. Friends I worried I couldn’t cook for. Friends I couldn’t show the plants in the yard. “Look, Josh, this is Ceonathus, come February, it’s going to bear white flowers and we named it John. And this one will have blue flowers, so it is called Emily, as it befits her.”
“Look, Meagan, these are the tiny flowers of sumac, yes, yes, I had to have a sumac for Sumak.”
Our house burned down, but it’s okay. The crickets burned down, the squirrels, the lizards, oh so many lizards, the owls could’ve flown away if the storm hadn’t been raging that night and the smoke hadn’t covered all skies and if only there had been somewhere to fly to. They could’ve rushed away with the bulbuls, with the jays and the mockingbirds and the towhees.
Our house burned down, it is only ashes, but it’s okay. It is only one of 8,988 and counting. Someone offered a bible, someone carried a crystal, someone rolled all the towels and socks in little balls quietly. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, they said.
Okay, I said. It’s okay. Okay. Okay. Our house burned down, but it’s okay.
Please be gentle with my boobs today, dear radiologist,
please be gentle with my boobs.
I hadn’t taken a good look at them till earlier
but give me a minute with them now
so I can get a good picture
in case they’re misshapen or something in your hands.
You’re doing a good job as you clean them with that orange liquid
all the while diverting my attention on
how to care for them days in the coming.
please be gentle with my boobs today, dear radiologist,
please be gentle with my boobs.
For the longest time they didn’t want any attention.
Putting a bra on or not both brought uninvited observation
so for long I kinda ignored them both
every now and then throwing a fancy bra at them
or slather on some thick cream to keep them perky and smooth.
So please be gentle with my boobs today, dear radiologist,
please be gentle with my boobs.
I know how mom started choking.
First it was words. Stuck in her throat, sometimes even down in her chest. Other times right between the teeth she was grinding under the immense pressure of her jaw. One day it was a piece of meat. That’s when we found out that she was really choking, as she tried, in vain, to dislocate the morsel from her throat with the rear end of the fork she used at the dinner table. It wasn’t clear, at first, whether the drops of blood in the tub were hers or the lamb’s.
Rushed to the hospital by the very person who caused her spasming throat, she was saved by a surgeon on night duty. The other occasions when she choked on a breadcrumb, a slice of watermelon, the fuzzy peel of a peach or the bit of lentil that escaped the blades of a blender weren’t worthy of a hospital visit.
It all came to me recently when I started feeling the gentle tightening of words unspoken around my neck. A metaphorical morsel dislodged itself from the confines of my chest. I didn’t want to choke on my food as she had. I like eating too much to allow that.
Is this the emergency side or the hospital side of the parking lot, she asked.
I don’t know, the other replied. It is such a huge building.
Hard to say once we are underground, she commented.
I got my permanent placard this week, the other said. Look for the disabled parking spots.
They are all taken, she pointed. You’d think they’d have many more disabled spots in a hospital parking lot.
Bummer, the other responded. Now we’ll have to walk too far and I am so short of breath.
Should we pick up that wheelchair, she asked.
I don’t know, I can still walk, the other responded.
Sure you can walk, she said. But we might as well take it. It’s not every day you cough up blood.
Alright, the other agreed. Which way do you think the elevator is.
It says elevator on that wall ahead, she said. It also says elevator on that wall way back.
Let’s take this elevator, the other said. At least it’s closer.
Once we are up on street level, we can find the emergency entrance, she agreed.
Do you have the parking ticket, the other asked. They might validate.
The insurance should really cover the hospital parking, she said. It should be part of the health coverage.
The funeral of our house… or as the ACE calls it, the debris removal. No more accidentally catching a glimpse of a colander, or film cartridges, of broken coffee cups. No more considering whether I could lift the sunken piece of roof to search for our wedding bands because I know exactly where they are: under the roof, under the ceiling, under the now doughy mixture of drywall, under the ash of the closet, under the burned and disappeared boxes of notes, papers, odds and ends, under the shelf where I kept the nail polish and hair pins, on top of the ashes of photo paper and enlarger filters. No more though. Now our wedding bands, hopefully stuck together and melted into each other, are on the back of one of the 18 trucks carrying our past. Supposedly our future will come in at the back of some other trucks, eventually. But first will come the loss of our jacaranda who was there since 1947.
Hopefully the pods of seeds I collected will have the life force in them to push through. Otherwise I’ll add one more Ball jar to my collection of pickled emotions. This one will be labeled “loss of our jacaranda” and I’ll put it next to the others with labels “the loneliness of the evacuation night”, “my mom’s earrings”, “our photos”,
“His paintings”, “friends disappeared.” There will come a time to open the jars and digest however intensely fermented they may be.
The house as a building may be no more (I could write a whole volume to add to Bachelard’s), but the idea is still there. The ACE crews being our guests, we shared coffee and donuts. Isn’t that what a house is, what a house is for?
I think she started dying on the day I started worrying about her death. She had been living her life as any woman of her age up until then. Then, one day, just like that, I realized her mortality, that she would, one day, inevitably die, that I would, one day, inevitably face her death. From that point on, time became linear, moving towards that unknown, unseen marker, somewhere in the distance. In a way, by my realization, I started the timer that would kill my mother. In a way, I watched her dying, one day at a time, as she lived.
At my absolute worst, it feels as if the water of the Colorado River is wasted on me.
Surely, anyone is plenty worthier than me to shed the grime of their body, the grease of their hair in the minerally water running through all those aqueducts and various pipes. Surely, anyone is plenty worthier than me for that gig, that sweet bit or that last bite. And yet, wanting to deflect any attention, to disappear into the background, to turn into mist or dust, to let go of particles and articles and itemized lists of wishes and passions, to slowly unbecome is the ultimate objective. The culture of my origin, even of my nuclear, ergo explosive, family defers to self flagellating wisdom that goes like “coughing up blood but explaining it away as recently enjoyed cranberry juice” or “long sleeves are good for hiding broken arms.”
Appropriation of translation of interpretation makes interesting poetry, then, after all, I do take a shower, the water of the Colorado River yet again wasted on me.
sometimes speaking
to one’s self, to hear,
through an other,
as if through the oracle.
giraffeinwhite.com 