Carcass
All my need took
you down like a meal.
Anne Sexton
There was grandma, clasping her purse, asking
if it was a movie; my papaw, reciting the Bible;
and mother with her death instinct, her left
arm at my neck, the cubic zirconium bracelet
imprinted on the sprout of an Adam’s apple,
her heavy breasts cupping my neck, the odd
burst of breath at my cowlick, her silence
purposeful as a killer’s.
And the cops and robbers outside.
Screaming, a smoking gun, a black pool
of blood like a bedspread.
I don’t remember the rest.
Mother squeezed my windpipe and I passed out.
When I awoke we were again inside the restaurant.
They offered me water and a plate
of fried chicken. The carpet smelled of food.
My grandparents sat above me at the banquet
table, and my mother beside, pressing
my thumb into her wrist so hard the arm turned blue.
They put us in the party suite, she said.
I just wanted to protect you, she said.
And finally my father came, swinging open
the double doors, standing over me
like the director of this production.
A year later my father and I found ourselves
pulled into the ocean.
His legs were cramped, dangling over
an inner tube, useless as candy.
The faraway beach began to look flat—
all I heard was the ocean. Some divers
dared the undertow: their faceless, slick
bodies bobbed on the round balls of waves,
but they were too afraid to get close.
We were like lepers that day.
They thought we were sure to drown.
Again I almost died, too young to regret it.
Later I realized he too thought
we were going to die. It was his silence,
his body limp and close
to crucified on the flotation device.
It isn’t fair that fathers are allowed
to accept their deaths. They should fight,
they should scream and bite, they should claw
like a blade in someone’s belly.
I’ve thought a lot about my own
demise but never his.
My father isn’t dramatic enough to die.
But when he does perhaps I will be there,
thinking he is asleep, my body over his
like a vulture over its possible meal.
He told me once there
was a twin in the womb
with him, that it was
stillborn, unnamed.
They joke that my father killed it.
My father was dead, too,
in his own way,
yet still his thoughtless heart pumps.
He is nothing but an animal.
He searches for food. He shits. He sleeps.
But his survival instinct is broken
and I tell myself that means he has a soul.
Rebecca, you ask me why I live like there’s a knife
to my throat, and I say: because I hope there is.
