I Don't Speak Flower
There have been times—
not so many—but a
time,
when I told my therapist
I have not words
left to pray.
Christ, have mercy, he said.
That’s left.
*
The man across the river fireworks
the slim, chilled night air with sparks
from his welding machine.
He is standing, in front of a vertical light hooked from a tree, a urine-yellow shop light.
He’s wearing a neon green t-shirt,
(like the parking guys wear at megachurches’ mega-parkinglots)
(like my son in recovery right now) (he parked cars last night
because doing service is part of recovery)
Sparks spew at an angle—veer, angle, arc, angle,
then up to the night sky
*
I see you
black-fingered
night
o nearer
my sky
to
thee
*
Sparks fountain like the fountain of Trevi.
We dangled our fingertips there on our honeymoon, and
I remember already seeing,
in the pale sulfur lightning on Charybdis-froth water
already knowing my husband had stopped seeing me
that he would spurt us back up in pieces, my mast, my bones, a shard of rib,
and I would put it all back together and sail off on a tongue depressor
without
him
*
I see you
black-fingered
night
o nearer
my sky
to
thee
*
The Adderall is wearing off—
three hours until Seroquel.
O, the time Wellbutrin has spent padding around my brain,
wearing smiley-face slippers, leaves me less than convinced
it’s actually doing anything.
And the Lexapro, it’s just a kitten jabbing a white-tipped paw
under the bathroom door. Pretty play
prescription.
*
What I am getting around to is this.
Sometimes,
or have there been many times?
I could not pray—
when I woke up, and a kerosene-brined sock
stuffed down my throat made the gutpeals pale
to hoarse howls. . . .
Sometimes, now?
Christ, have mercy.
*
Is it a sin I like the colors? That sweet, blue sky Klonopin,
the pale nectarine of Lexapro.
Hydrocodone cloud-white,
and, O the
sea of Xanax aquamarine.
Christ have mercy.
*
The man across the river stands straight beneath the light.
The light caps him with a pope hat, like a diamond miter.
And the fire looks like fire coming from his loins.
All around me is angelic and super
natural. Is anything real? The log floating downriver,
debris creaking from bank to current, current to bank,
the welder, the front-end loader, the hydraulic lift, the dump truck is all of this holy-ness real?
Christ, have mercy
*
It’s just that I can’t even write it down, the moments when I could not say the four syllables, the three words, ______________, ___________ ____________.
When my son’s friend was missing but really dead, when my son’s friend went down to Parchman but got shivved five days later, when I text my son , Are you okay?
when what I really mean is,
am I
*
I’m trying so hard and can’t say pray. My new therapist said,
when you wake in the night / terror tipping the moon on a sliding scale through the windowsill /and still overthink it / not over it but through it / / and really I’m whittling down the night
sky around the deck outside where no noise pollution no light pollution is
and the night sky is black
I can’t see the moon
*
The moon is a round white pill called Ambien.
Christ, have mercy.
*
I see nothing in the night sky, the dizzy night air / or
I see an explosion in the night air—
whichever you want it to be
Is it real when it looks like an explosion a whole sky filled with a fountain of fireworks you see none of that but ruminate what’s happening to your son he is kneeling before a group of men they are circled around him in prison
and she says, the new therapist says, That is not happening right now. Say to yourself, “That is not happening right now.”
Christ, have mercy,
what if it is
*
And Christ, have mercy last night when his voice sounded more drawled and more drawn, slower,
less effortless
His words, as if he had to pause and choose
a little each word to make sure it was right and green the grain of his suffering,
justify why that night he might have
slipped
Everyone slips—but
not him. He can’t. Not even once. Not again.
*
O child
If you do, I have to move away from you, I . . .
My son, I can’t be with you, I am
on this journey you are taking
I don’t know if you did it—took anything
That is not
no never
Christ, have mercy
not happening right now. okay
Christ around me Christ before me
Christ in the river clouds
Christ in the river detritus
Christ in the river fountain
of gold-green welder’s sparks
in the lava glow
the glacier moon glow
Christ in mosquito creek
Christ in the river-clog
Christ in the dead things Christ in the living
in the sog in the green
sails of flat-leaved lilies in their yellow, tight-coiled buds rehearsing spring
They don’t know, and I can’t tell them
I don’t speak flower
I don’t speak language
I don’t speak anything
anymore
I can’t warn them the first freeze is slipping
in sideways cooling the water
even now
They’ll never make it
They weren’t meant to
It only feels like spring
It only felt like spring
again for
a few days
*
Sometimes, I don’t have _________ left to offer
(sometimes)
O river
O black-fingered night sky
You must be enough
have mercy
