"You look tired."
Are you saying I can't do my job?
Are you saying I shouldn't be here?
Are you saying I'm old, ugly, worn out?
Useless?
("I can't," she said.)
Why do you persist? Insist? I hold up
my head by way of meat and bone.
Isn't that enough?
What else am I supposed to do? To be?
("I can't do this.")
You whose name I know
only from the plastic
rectangle pinned to
your uniform like
mine: "At your
service
since"
it's
not a
prison, a
school, I'm not
here for an interview,
an audition, a loan, a raise,
do I have to smile to assuage
your false concern? ("I can't do
this anymore,") you nobody to
a nobody who just wants to
get through one more
shift, one more bus
ride, one more
alarm, one
more
look
at
a
face
I only
recognize through
long acquaintance
with plum eyes
and bird beak
and slash
mouth
and
(she said, I was told,
she walked away,
no two weeks,
no notice)
I wonder sometimes do I look
different, to them, to their
animal gazes skipping
over me like ruminant
tongues I don't
need "You
look,"
do
you?
("I can't,"
she said,
and
she walked away.
"I can't do this anymore."
Two decades my senior, we bonded
over suicidal ideation and cats and
men we shouldn't have let do what
they did and a mutual revulsion
for our own sex. "I can't do this,"
she said. "I can't do this
anymore."
and
she
gave me a gift, a definition of love.
"It makes me happy,"
she said, "to see you happy."
she
gave me a number, to the suicide
hotline she'd dialed the year be-
fore, torn from a magazine,
with a pretty picture on
the other side, a sea-
shell among bright
berries, so I wove
it into a collage,
and so poetry
is collage,
and so
I was
inspired
by
her,
by
my
first
work
friend,
before I
understood
the difference,
before I understood
the difference, I loved her.
she
didn't
waste words
on bitterness or
despair, she got out
of bed every day to show
up, to lift up, without complaint,
to let dark humor and sacrifice
roll us through concrete mornings.
That's why I didn't waste words,
that's why I got out of bed,
every day, to show up,
to lift up, my wonder-
ful young people,
to meet them
where
they
were,
and
so
I
was
loved
in return.
She will never
know how much she
meant to me, to my future.
I met my friends, my son, I met
the only life I ever want, head
on, straight through, be-
cause of her,
because
I met
her.)
I am so grateful.
I have a home.
I have a job.
I have a family.
("I can't" she said.
I miss her.
"I can't do this anymore.")
and
she walked away,
to where, and how,
I will never
know.
September 17, 2021
