Writing About (Your) Illness Is Like
watching the snow hurl itself onto
the cold concrete pavement,
a long lag between touchdown
and melting point, each flake
heavy as rock,
the fall accompanied by sound,
your body stuck in the inertia of lay.
“Mami,” I said, walking into your room,
the door etched in red like a fire was burning inside,
and found upon the bed the sheets swaddling
each limb, each cell having given up motion
with a stench, the layers
upon layers of baby cloth,
training pads,
disposable diapers,
washcloths hanging to dry
unfolding their rancid
smell into the space
where your breath
is tied to the glance
in the same direction.
And when I saw the body of my mother’s
mother dying, I called you, “Mami,”
roped into the place
like a flower cut on the edge of music,
your moans, the cries “help” or “I’m cold”
as if this illness that pilfered your little bones
might retreat in tidal sway
splitting the body open,
unravelling what no possible warning
could have prevented,
that fall,
the freeze,
that explosion of burgundy in the brain,
as if a door opened into a fire,
the skin paralyzed in goosebumps,
flaking despite all the moisturizing.
But then this shapeshifter room
kept you hostage,
trapped in your memories
that returned over and over
like a meat patty in frying oil,
gliding along the scaffolding of
homesickness,
and I walked out, still whispering your name,
knowing that life is nothing but the distance
between home and cradle,
this cradle, the grave,
spilling hurt every each way.
Falling into the Quiet, She Churns
after Kitra Cahana’s Still Man
“At
my age,” my grandmother used to say,
“I
am cinched by the certainty
that
everything and everyone
is
always already in motion,”
and
I think of that sweet conviction
holding
it tightly into knots on her tongue
this
moment, as I sit
by
her hospital bed,
hovering
my palm over her lips
for
reassurance that her breath
still
flies swiftly like ancient bees.
The
stroke churns her memory
into
ambiguous fragments—
the war like a river spilling into
the young meadow,
the Russian’s cold gun
barrel lingering across her thigh—
&
in a while, takes away all her words,
so
in his tight bed, she looks unraveled
like
a newborn,
a
young moth whose weak wings
shake
inchoate with the new air.
Tethered
by catheters and tubes,
my
grandmother dreams about all history,
the
depth and the squeals,
the
black bulk, the nearness,
the
toppled boats,
her
baby boy drowning in a barrel,
the
yard wide like a ghost’s mouth
years
before I became me,
all
the village drinking in the last minutes,
the
sun sinking to the bottom of that barrel
next
to my grandmother’s stilled heart.
When
I fix her pillow or pull up
a
limp corner of her blanket,
I
almost hear her breath sound,
as
if to say, “I’m all right,”
&
despite my pain,
this
world, full of hurt as it is,
unfolds
clearly before my eyes,
like
a clean sheet hung across a window,
its
silence sealing the room gray.
This
illness spreads over her body slowly,
closing
down every capillary intent,
the
pain, the broken minutes,
but
I know that all drama,
all
grief and death and strain
mean
something strong enough
to
make it hard to let go.
Last Fragment
Yes,
you are still singing to me
into
this new year of long silences
and
many slept hours,
first in the
bungalow by the sea,
next in this
terrible room,
where doctors’
sneer and rhinoceros drift by.
You
should have warned me that the walls
would
be so white,
all the walls
humming,
the
window blind,
this hospital
growing darkness
in Petri dishes.
Minutes
waste away their percussive music,
and
I am wide awake, willing sad birds
into
the mud sky, outside, where things still
grow
anomalies.
Whisper to me my
prayers,
make
my fists listen,
learn
the
leaning of time into walls like tall
coat
hangers,
the tingling smell
of chlorine,
a nurse’s white
gloved fingers fumbling
with a catheter
strip.
I
see the sorrow hanging over your face—
an
ugly moment.
Why are you here?
Roxana L. Cazan is an Assistant Professor of English
and Women’s Studies at Saint Francis University, PA, where she teaches world
and postcolonial literature and creative writing. Most recently, her poems appeared
in Connecticut River Review, Construction Magazine, Cold Creek
Review, The Healing Muse, Adanna Literary Journal, Watershed Review, Allegro
Poetry, the Peeking Cat Anthology, and others. She is the author of a
poetry book, The Accident of Birth (Main Street Rag, 2017).
