by Lois Chapin
once again,
so he can go
and be with her now.
Sons
I look into the sweet face of Trayvon
gazing up at me from the glossy tabloid
as I place the last can of Pedigree
on the conveyor belt.
The checker at Smart & Final
scans it with a hand tipped
by five colorful mosaics.
It’s hard to imagine her sitting
still for these masterpieces
by the manicurist.
I wonder if these
are how she’s rebelled
at what her mother told her
about beauty and practicality.
The gray-haired man behind me
in line places a six pack
of paper towels
on the moving black belt.
I remember teaching my son
how to count,
make change,
look both ways,
wait his turn
and hold the door for women.
The man begins rocking forward
and backwards,
his right knee locked,
stretching his leg out
in front of him.
I recognize the self-soothing
repetition from my intern days
teaching sign language
to autistic children.
I half expect his hand
to start flapping.
He doesn’t smell
like grape gum
and milk cartons.
No, his unshowered,
late 40’s body odor
precedes his rumpled
white shirt
as his rocking creeps
closer and closer
toward me
in the confined space.
I taught the autistic kids
to rub circles on their chests
with a fist
to say, “I’m sorry,”
when they hurt
each other.
It was my job
to teach my son
to say, “please” and “thank you”
at the grocery store,
yet not talk
to strangers.
My personal code is that I do not
educate anyone now
who isn’t asking me
for advice.
It’s how I stay
off the clock
when not at work,
stay fun at parties
and deal
with my codependent heritage.
At least that’s what
I tell myself.
The smell of greasy hair fills
my nostrils
as I swipe my ATM card.
Staring at the floor he mutters,
“Nice day huh?”
in the directions of the cashier.
I wonder if his mother taught him
a few social phrases
to parrot for survival.
Mothers do that.
The urge to instruct him
on personal space
wells inside me.
But it’s not my job,
I remind myself.
I look around him
back to the magazine rack.
So many things I never
had to teach
my own son.
I had it easy
as a mother.
My friends of color
must try to teach
life-saving lessons
ones I can barely find
words for.
I place the bag in my cart
and accept the receipt
handed to me
by glitter-sparkling
works of art.
I remind myself
it’s not my job,
but the internal
conversation swirls;
“Sir, may I touch you?
Yes?
Okay take your arm,
that’s right,
hold it out straight,
yes,
just like that.
That’s how much personal space
is appropriate.
Like your mother
taught you,
right?
I’m sure you just
forgot.”
No, today I walk out
of the air-conditioned store
into the heat
of the parking lot
carrying my dog food
and wonder
how mothers ever teach
enough
to keep
their sons safe.
Stubby
I left my boyfriend’s home
and flew to Hawaii
to race canoes.
I invited him to come with me
to ogle bronze Samoans
and touch real Koa wood outriggers
but he stayed home to sit hospice
with my black arthritic greyhound,
a dog named after the god Anubis.
Now I’m not saying
my boyfriend is a saint
but instead of time in paradise
stirring Mai Tais with fruit salad sticks
and swimming with sea turtles
he barbecued Anubis
a $26 porterhouse,
with tears streaming down his face,
drove him to the Huntington Beach vet
and held him while he died.
That was my daughter’s cue
to start pitching for a cat.
I like cats and all,
but with her out of rehab,
Anubis back in the Underworld,
my mother with her new Life Alert
I’m looking forward to more tropical paddle races
without anchors.
“I’ll take care of him,” she said.
“Pay for everything.”
That had been true of the guy
she brought to Hawaii.
A cat weighed, what, 2%
of the skinny guy she hauled around
to family events?
My three bedroom house is too quiet now.
“Fine” I said.
After investigating seven no-kill shelters
she brought home
a long-haired
3 legged
cat.
Stubby.
He eats off my best china
in a pirate collar.
She pays for his allergy-safe
fish-free food.
Yesterday, I let him go outside with me
while I dug up dried tomato plants.
After all, he wasn’t going far
gimping on three paws.
I brought him back inside
before she got off work.
Instead of topple, plop, plop,
rubbing against her leg
when she got home,
he yowled
at the sliding glass door.
She glared at me.
I shrugged.
She picked him up,
scratched under his chin.
“I know,” she said.
“She gave you false hope
about what you can do.
I get it.”
Loneliness
Loneliness is a powerful motivator in my life, more so than anger, disappointment, or even betrayal. Not being seen appears to be an
intolerable state for me.
Loneliness in my first relationship overcame my fear that I would burn in hell for having more than one sexual partner in my life.
Loneliness eclipsed my financial fears and humiliation of breaking my wedding vows when I got divorced.
Loneliness creeps up and settles in like an evil possession. I fight it with work, writing, exercise, sending thank you cards, but it sneaks in and flows like bile thorough my veins.
I argue with it. “We’re all one,” “No one is an island,” “Be your own best friend,” but the clichés burst at the mere whiff of loneliness.
Loneliness immobilizes me, but also kicks my ass into motion. Strange drug.
I want to spin it into gold like Rumpelstiltskin’s straw. Dead cells no longer needing sustenance woven into shimmering aliveness. Shafts of cut-off dead foliage transformed to something precious and desired.
Alchemy of loneliness, an artist’s angst. I have to fill the hungry hole with something.
Moustakas writes of the existential angst of loneliness and how to embrace it. I think existentialists live in an existentially theoretical world.
In the last hours of labor with my daughter the nurse told me not to push, cervical swelling, but my entire body argued with her.
Embracing loneliness and not pushing on it, is like panting and resisting my body’s urge to turn itself inside out through my birth canal. I don’t know how long I can “just breathe.”
Maybe loneliness settles in Eustachian tubes like a bad cold settles into your lungs.
To be seen is probably not a universal drive, just universal throughout my body and mind.
Loneliness doesn’t bring flowers to my door, rather telegrams of the helplessness of invisibility that’s my lot. Morning Glories rather than Stargazers. Glimpses not real connection.
In tribes we fought loneliness because humans are weak; we can only stand up to stronger animals in packs. Being alone is not only emotionally vulnerable but life-threatening in genetic memory.
My loneliness likes photo albums, yellowed stuck-together pages that rip pictures in half if you remove them. Portraits of another time, even digital ones posted with comments under them by strangers.
Loneliness settles down with a bottle of wine on a rainy day by the fire and looks through photo albums with me. We remember joyful bonds and memories with others, insinuating the hope of maybe more ahead.
I don’t know what rest stop I picked up loneliness, but it’s clear I now have a constant companion.
Pierced
plops to the plastic chair
just outside security.
She wipes the warm sticky
moisture off her hands
onto her expensive shredded jeans.
The TSA agent swiped inside her backpack
and over her upturned palms
with the brown wet tape.
They’d never detect the real bomb.
She was waiting back
in the US.
Heather replaces all her belongings
in her now certified explosive-free backpack
and reties her 20 eyelet Doc Martins.
The marque says one hour until boarding begins
for flight 431 to Oklahoma City.
She trudges to a plastic seat
in front of the countdown
to doom.
It’s a cousin of the institutional chairs
in the hospital where they kept her
for 72 hours.
London had seemed a universe away
one year ago.
Now she’s heading back.
Back to what her mom calls
home
and she calls hell.
She pulls at one of the rings poked
through her penciled-on eye brow.
It hadn’t hurt,
not that bad.
Just made her tear up
a little.
She got the second one the day
the plastic stick showed a plus sign.
That one hurt.
She rolls one of the multi-faceted balls
on the rings between her fingers.
It’s the same shape,
although miniature,
as the multi-faceted Christmas ornament
her dad
had used
to show her how a round earth could look flat
from where one stood
on its surface.
He would have understood.
Every sharp horizon is a precipice
to the end of the world.
But her dad was dead.
The cardiologist called it congestive heart failure.
Fancy doctor speak
for a broken heart.
That’s when she got the third one.
The piercings are solid
memorials to those she’s lost.
Violent attacks on her face
are permanent exhibits of grief.
The three dime-sized wire circles
bearing one, two and three black onyx beads
were also the last straw
for her mom.
The marque now says 15 minutes ‘til boarding.
An ocean still separates her
from being a prodigal daughter.
She wants to run back through security
and back to the flat where Billy had held her
after they lost the baby.
But it’s empty.
He’s back on the street
poking holes in his own body.
She huddles under her hoodie
and yanks one loop from the puffy flesh
over her eye.
She slides it over her pinky.
She looks up to see if anyone is staring
at her.
All eyes are glued to phones and tablets.
She sits alone
under the ever-changing marque
at Heathrow airport.
She yanks the second one out
along with its two spinning beads.
How quick it is
to undo what took a week of obsessing
over the internet to find just
the right size ring,
just the right color stone beads,
just the right gage of wire,
just the right piercing parlor,
and just the right supportive friend.
Not to mention the tender care for weeks
of alcohol and saline.
She rips out the third ring,
and hiding her hand with her jacket,
lets all three fall to the floor
under her chair.
Jewelry is precious.
Even found treasures of plastic rings and bracelets
elicit squeals from bored little girls at airports.
But piercing jewelry
is hazmat.
Mothers warn small children not to touch.
Everyone will pretend not to notice
the three rings with onyx stones
until maintenance sweeps
them into a long handled dust pan.
Monarch
After the other butterflies
are set free,
the one with the broken wing stays
at the bottom of the white box.
The father of the bride,
a security guard,
took his gun and Taser to work,
forgetting this date.
He refused the plane ticket to fly from Oklahoma
since DFS hadn’t made it out
to inspect his mobile home before the t
ornado
took it.
So now,
he’s focused on protecting his next daughter,
the 12-year-old bisexual,
asked by stepdad
to watch her break her cherry
with a dildo.
The monarch fans its one good wing,
antennae searching for help
and possible danger.
Wearing a black Halloween wig scavenged
from a Goodwill costume bag,
a woman supports her full-body tremor,
damage from drugs and alcohol,
with a three-legged cane
tied with a mother-of-the-bride courage.
She didn’t forget,
just said she wasn’t coming
after spewing threats to call the police
on the bride
the day before
the wedding.
The monarch strains to stretch its tattered wing
in the salt air.
The bride’s half-sister,
a FAS testament to their shared mother,
is dressed in full bridal attire.
Her white gown stands out against
the sand as she stares out at the ocean
wearing her mother’s perfume,
diluted by the smells of the beach.
The other butterflies,
long gone on the late afternoon breeze,
left the wounded one
alone.
The minister asks the groom
if his family speaks Bulgarian.
Smiling,
he replies they speak Macedonian
in Macedonia.
I wonder how many stupid questions
he’s been asked in his two weeks
in the U.S.
The six-year-old reaches into the box
lifting the injured butterfly
with a delicate hand.
The same small hand that zipped
up her mother’s bridal gown
this morning.
A solution to a final quandary
the two of them have had to face
living on their own
for the past six years.
The bride’s grandmother talks to herself,
spitting bits of food from a mouth
over-stuffed with beef ribs
and sour dough.
She plots to get her great-granddaughter
to come home with her
on the wedding night,
to teach her about
Jesus and the plagiarizing prophetess.
She and the bride’s own mother construct
empty promises,
veiled threats,
the young prize to be won over,
bringing financial support
to whomever maneuvers to care
for her.
The child tries again to make the butterfly
