Is This Scary?

by Jacob Scheier

  and ruin the furniture.

  The parents to be

  need a new ottoman.

  The waiting place persists

  without me. The doors blink

  and stare. Names are called

  and not called. The dream home

  is always almost complete.

  Nearly 50% of Toronto Islands underwater after recent deluge of rain: City

  I’m sorry/I could not row the boat/ashore

  — Half-remembered lines from a poem published in a literary journal approximately fifteen years ago, which I’ve been unable to locate

  At the risk of stating

  the obvious, the island,

  that place we met

  and fell in—is

  underwater. In the rom-com,

  we got married alongside the hedge maze

  on Hanlan’s Point. We imagined

  more than I could handle.

  Your dreams, Love, are very heavy

  or maybe they are light

  as a baby. It depends

  on how real a thing is love or the future—

  obviously, at the risk of—

  they are adjacent

  to some real, though it’s hard because

  neither can be held like a present.

  On Christ-mass, I held your gift

  and shook it, a little, trying

  to guess what might be inside.

  But inside all of that was fear

  —not of nothing—

  but of things that feel

  like they could turn

  to nothing. “I’m sorry/

  I could not row the boat/ashore.”

  These half-remembered lines I remembered once

  but forgot long before we met

  in that time which resembles the present

  —now is like then—

  except for memory

  we are strangers

  again. We did not row

  but were ferried there

  to what is now a shoreless island—

  a place beginning in the middle

  or ending there. I too notice

  the central metaphor is falling

  apart. I’m sorry

  I could not row the boat

  ashore. These stolen and butchered

  lines better than the emails I begin

  and can’t send, ever since I said

  I’m sorry/I can’t do this/

  anymore. I don’t know

  exactly what I meant by this—

  how much of this was us

  and how much the idea

  of where I thought

  we were headed. I thought

  myself incapable

  of arrivals. I’m sorry/

  I don’t know who the boat is

  and who, the shore.

  But the flood isn’t about us.

  Climate change as metaphor is

  problematic, but in my defence

  that poem or this one is, I think,

  about carelessness. In related news,

  yesterday, and mostly

  by coincidence, I found myself

  at the ferry docks accompanied

  by an absurd idea: if I looked far enough

  from the mainland, I could see

  the flooding. I could see

  what was no longer there.

  Of course, there is nothing

  to report, other than a sign,

  which, if I am remembering properly,

  read: residents and special personnel—

  of which we are neither—

  are permitted to cross. I’m sorry/

  it is literally impossible/

  to reach the shore/now

  though maybe that was always the case.

  It’s just something I can say now without

  uncertainty. But you knew all that.

  You read the news.

  In Praise of Losing Things

  Nothing to grieve.

  Only things, but

  we needed them

  to lock our doors or prove

  we are who we claim.

  The irreplaceable ones,

  in truth, merely substitutes

  for the irrevocable.

  But even these are not gone—

  like all lost things

  we may just never see them

  again. They wait for us

  under cushions, purloined

  upon table-cloth daffodils.

  Subway stowaways by mistake.

  Have you checked your pockets?

  asks the well-intended,

  who thinks you a novice at loss.

  Your reversed pockets flop.

  On strewn clothes, your frantic hands,

  teenagers at drive-ins.

  Retrace your steps, she says,

  as though you haven’t already

  ransacked your home until

  it appears burgled. You unbury

  old losses. Find so much

  that has turned useless.

  Sometimes things turn up

  when you stop looking.

  The cliché that sounds

  like a koan and undermines

  the urgency you’ve found.

  Then comes the dreaded question:

  Where was the last place

  you remember having them?

  You want to snap back

  Of course, if I knew that,

  then I wouldn’t—but you’ve lost

  the subtext. She wants to know

  how you could be so careless.

  Ode to Remicade

  You wait eight weeks. I promise

  to arrive on time. Strange to consider you naked

  without my body

  warming the plastic upholstery. The IV bag

  sags. Be patient, Thirsty Drip,

  you will repress my immunity soon. Superego

  without a conscience. Dear Remi, Fair Cade,

  I’ve been saving my best vein.

  Our pearl anniversary is imminent.

  One morning, I’ll unwrap the black box

  warning & surprise! find you inside—

  Quiet Crab, stand erect & scuttle to me slowly.

  There’s no hurry now. As promised

  I have kept our appointment.

  Infusion Song

  The panoramic view of the parking lot

  is majestic. Beneath the sun asphalt softens

  like chocolate. The air inside the clinic,

  cold and still as a snow globe. I recline,

  my feet point towards the sky.

  In this land of the sick, we are all kings

  for two hours and forty-five minutes.

  Personal TVs and IV pole sceptres. My remote

  control, a trident. I mute the screen.

  My immune system swims in liquid

  clear as gin. I await the snacks, am bereft

  to find no Kit Kats left. Time

  drips. Impatient for my vitals check.

  The blood pressure cuff, tight as a hug.

  And Then Job Answered God from inside the Whirlwind They Were Both Caught inside Of

  I am of small account: what shall I answer thee?

  — 40:4

  I will kvetch in the bitterness of my soul.

  Sentenced to bright Sheol. Punished for suffering.

  Meds soften feelings to trees. Gnawed rootlessness. Exiled

  from myself. Diaspora

  without rivers

  to weep beside. I weep

  in the shower

  by the wa
ter fountain.

  I weep into paper cups of medicinal jewels till they dissolve

  to dust and ashes.

  Imagine Sisyphus too weak to push.

  You take the myth too literally. Punished to some curve of corridor

  to roll an absence of self

  back and forth.

  Mealtime gives form to the day and the waiting

  for the daily assessment

  sometime

  between eight and six. Waiting

  for nothing

  to change.

  Is there not a limit on suffering or suffering? What is my end

  that I should be patient?

  You do not ask. You ask

  the answer translated to symptom

  depression talking

  as though it were someone else

  dybbuk possession a symptom.

  But what do we really live for?

  Or do we live?

  The question worthy of clinical observation.

  You do not ask.

  Reasons are symptoms.

  You see my calamity and are afraid.

  Reuptake faith. The synaptic sea

  in the well mind sequins with serotonin.

  So dense there isn’t space

  to weep beside. Am I the sea

  or the sea monster?

  When the patient responds marginally,

  administer lightning.

  You will forget your misery; you will remember it as waters

  that have passed away.

  If I am sick

  turn the key

  of the receptor’s hushed casket.

  Cut my brain down the middle.

  Centre of normalcy.

  Unglue my brain.

  Pull out the cortex like fibreglass.

  Insulate against pain.

  Worthless physicians all of you!

  May there be a lament in your belly—a klog dir in boykh.

  Zol dir shnaydn di kishkes—a stabbing pain in your guts.

  A thunderbolt in your sides—a duner dir in di zaytn.

  Oysdarn zol your brain bay dir der moyekh

  should dry up. Zolst kakn shit

  mit blut un mit ayter blood and pus.

  Zolst kakn mit blut un mit ayter a meshugenem a maniac

  zol men oysshraybn un dikh araynshraybn

  should be crossed off the register

  of madmen and you should be inscribed in his place.

  Zolst onkumen tsu mayn mazl—

  you should have my luck.

  Oh, that I had one to listen to me (Here is my signature,

  let the Almighty answer me!)

  If not god then Leviathan.

  This earth, the whirlwind.

  Job’s Girlfriend

  is the title of the poem I was going to write for you. Forgive

  the exposition, but the poem requires that you know

  Job lost his children and property and kept his faith

  until God struck him with boils from head to toe.

  Once the loss is him, his faith goes.

  You don’t need reminding about my affliction

  or as they say, the partial blockage of the visual receptor

  that boils in my mind.

  Job spends a lot of time

  arguing with his friends about justice

  and God shows up at the end and speaks.

  What he says isn’t important

  to the poem. He’s just another man with a take

  on suffering. I’m more interested in Job’s wife.

  She is not a significant character in the story

  except to me. She has just one line,

  tells Job to “Curse God

  and die.” Then is silenced by the men

  speaking about fairness and faith.

  After that, Job barely mentions her again

  though he says, “My breath is offensive to my wife.”

  I sometimes like to take this line literally.

  Job’s breath stank because in his despair

  he stopped taking care of his dental hygiene

  but obviously that’s an anachronism.

  But so, I’ve felt lately, is love.

  The premise of the poem was that Job

  leaves his wife for another woman,

  which in the story he wouldn’t have done

  since part of his innocence defense

  is his faithfulness. But in the poem

  he opts for your kindness over

  his own sense of righteousness

  because you are the only person

  that sees him behind his sickness.

  Job’s girlfriend also knows what it means

  to be ill. They take longs walks and discuss disease

  under the olive trees of Uz and, of course,

  fall in love. In the poem, as in the story,

  as in real life, Job spends a lot of time

  waiting for God to speak through a whirlwind.

  Tornadoes are rare in Toronto.

  Still, I’ve been waiting and waiting to hear God

  in the wind. Waiting occupies all my time,

  but in the poem, I realize

  your breath is the breeze God speaks through.

  Your voice is a gentle whirlwind.

  Like that time I had a cold and we were kissing,

  and you asked me to brush my teeth because

  my breath smelled like NeoCitran, remember?

  But you wanted to keep

  kissing even if it made you sick.

  That’s when God appears hidden

  in the gentle whirlwind

  and says there is no justice,

  just light. That’s what happens in the poem

  I’ll never write. Because in real life my vision

  was not only distorted, I couldn’t listen

  to light. In real life I didn’t have faith

  that I could hear a faint glow. I

  let you go. But in the poem

  you make Job want, still, to curse God,

  but live. I guess

  I don’t get the chance now to write that poem,

  which is too bad,

  I think you really would have liked it.

  Lamotrigine Song

  Visit the Google Images gallery of side-effects & see

  leprosy in a hurry, bodies charcoaled, still lives.

  All of History in you.

  I brought you home from the hospital-

  pharmacy, swaddled

  in plastic, rattling beside impulse buys:

  chewing gum for boredom, scratch card

  to test my luck. I heard you tap

  against the childproof lid.

  0.08 percent get the rash: pogrom-ed skin. 1 in 10

  receive a scarlet warning

  & just in case must be taken from you—

  my pink miracle, suicide-inhibitor, provider of

  not faith, but will

  to endure absurdity

  without levity.

  The suicide in me desired

  to be incinerated. Body, a pyre.

  Metamorphosis: I’ve become the rash

  entirely. Allegorical

  of nothing. Reflect feelings not found

  on the emotion wheel: blood-libelled, skin-thieved, fleshless.

  Shame deeper than biblical. Unlike the psych—

  people would visit me in the burn ward. I dreamt of pity

  & fire. More of me wanted to want

  life. I tried you,

  Lamotrigine, a year ago

  & now pop with a Claritin at 8 a.m
.,

  impatiently watching the coffee drip

  & check my skin, then get on with this

  … with this … with this … ellipses of breaths.

  Re: hey, and i might have cancer

  I know we haven’t spoken in a while, but I just came back from having an MRI. I’m guessing you would rather not hear from me right now, especially about something like this. It’s just I wasn’t prepared for how enclosed the MRI machine would be, and I didn’t expect to be this scared. I haven’t forgotten what you said, and you were right: I took advantage of your kindness, at least, sometimes. I never meant to, but I did. I get that now. And I know it wasn’t okay—the way I ended things. It must have felt like it came out of nowhere. I’m sorry—I really wasn’t planning on writing to you. It’s just during the MRI, I couldn’t stop thinking about something I read in the news, years ago, about a boy who crawled into an abandoned freezer while playing hide and seek. He wasn’t found. I mean eventually he was, but of course by then. . . . Inside the MRI machine it sounded like one of those carnival haunted houses—when you’re in the little car and a really fake skeleton falls in your direction while a dim, red light flashes above and then that noise—like a cow having a heart attack. I used to love going on that ride. I would make my mother take me again and again, and I guess I did that because I knew exactly when the scary thing would happen. Familiarity, even when unpleasant, is that the opposite of fear? I stared at the machine’s curved ceiling the whole time. I thought I should close my eyes, that it will be easier if I close my eyes, but I didn’t. I wanted to be present. I wanted to remember the experience in detail since I thought it might be the beginning of the story. Though I suppose if this is the story, it’s hard to say when it began. I asked the tech why the machine was so loud, and he sounded tired when he said, “That’s just the way it works.” He said it like the way everyone says on some occasion or another, “Life is just like that,” or “That’s just the way the world is.” I felt close to god or the absence of god—in that machine, they felt like the same thing. I was momentarily certain, there was some kind of vast power determining our lives, and it had no idea why it worked the way it did. For no reason and without being able to do otherwise, it was just like that. I feared I was ruining the test, that I was breathing wrong. What if I’ve been breathing wrong my entire life? Have you ever flown home and walked into the area where people wait for their family members or partners, and find yourself looking around, trying to see the person who is there, in the crowd, waiting for you, and then realize—no one is? After the conveyor brought me back to where I began, I got dressed and stood outside the hospital and waited for the taxi. It was hot enough to sweat without moving. I closed the door to my apartment behind me and just stood there, completely unsure of what to do with myself, with my fear—with this thing inside me that could be nothing, or everything. This is how we end: god in the machine or is it god is the machine? It’s difficult to think clearly right now. Forgive me. And I know, I shouldn’t have written this to you. It was selfish. I realize that, but I needed to tell someone who would really care, even if she wished she didn’t. I needed someone, aside from me, to be waiting for the results. I will find out in a week. Less than that if you don’t count today. I’m sorry, it’s not fair of me to write this to you after all this time. But I will tell you as soon as I get the results. I promise, you’ll be the first to know.