Half Days My daughter, thirteen, pale shred of herself, fought an unidentified infection in her spine as it softened her discs into disappearance. I’d unread that story if she were young and still listened to lullabies. After she got discharged, I set an alarm for two a.m. each night to shoot antibiotics into her port while she slept, her limp arm resting in my hand. Her return to school: half days—follow my dotted line smearing across months of sleepless breadcrumbs— at noon I idled high, anxious in the school driveway rattling off the latest test results in the zero gravity of fear. She startled me with the brittle thunk of the car door slam, then snapped at me for staring at her friends as they strolled across the street to the cafeteria, creeping them out, she said, embarrassed by illness like hard acne or a blooming hickey, wrong music or flakey hair, or the tacky middle-school jumper she no longer had to wear. I was there to drive her to
great draft. i would only tinker a bit if at all. ending is fabulous. the only line where the meter seems a tad off is '...basin you catch it in'. also couldn't tell if that line break was intentional or due to formatting. or is that some kind of concrete and intentional break? at any, rate, that little bit stuck in my craw. otherwise, the whole scans fine for me. 'cease and decyst' is a little cute based on the other lines, but i can live with it. i wonder if that phrase can be hinted at using the same sounds with its explicit usage? just my two cents. ignore as necessary.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Gerry. I appreciate you reading this. I wanted the stark two-letter line, but now I dunno. . .
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