I was mixed up, twisted, warped inside
which I got from my father and his at
least monthly visits to
the evil school nurse
who placed cold hands on his back to
survey the strangeness of his spine.
The strangeness was
something that hid so
deep inside my stretching fat that only
the slant of my shoulders gave it away.
that my essence was
not upright: hunched.
The nice doctor who told me about the
singular solution had a daughter who
drowned some years
ago and she would be
my age if someone had noticed that
she was sitting by the pool alone on
that cool April day, that
almost Easter day, with
that heavenly warm wind that sung in
the New Jersey sycamores. So I was
never so angry that my
parents paid him to cut
me open: down the middle like a piece
of tough meat. Or tender fruit. Never
so furious that I missed
first snow. But December
gleamed like cool metal on my ruddy
over-bloodied cheeks. Made itself go
like a damned child
dirtying a lit creche.
So when that blizzard came like a
sign from the soon to be born Christ,
I craved in vain to be
un-bedridden. Free of
the blast heated room three four one
where all they let me do was watch a
dismal Dolly Parton
Holiday spectacular.
The one where she sings ‘Let It Snow’
and her big golden hair frames her
warbling cheeks, golden
like a Catholic fresco that
predicts the end of days with angels
and a beating sun. When the doctor
unplugged me from
the wall he reminded
me about learning to walk, and how
at first I would feel foreign in my own
feet. Wrong, like the
metal they put in me.