HELP. I'VE FALLEN AND I CAN'T GET UP.
this morning my mother's head smacked concrete.
it made a dull cracking sound, did not bounce.
i touched her scalp and felt a lump start to swell under my fingers
the size of a robin's egg, then a hen's, then a goose's.
i tried to take her to the hospital but she was
determined to continue her day; "it doesn't hurt that bad."
so she left, and i warily went about my day,
going on 20 hours of consciousness.
i napped mid-afternoon and dreamed of brains swelling,
woke with a yelp and startled my boyfriend, who gently shushed me
back into a state of hazy calm, love, and forgetfulness.
tonight, while tossing fitfully under covers,
shivering in convulsions from untamed opiate withdrawals,
i heard my dad's indecipherable murmur in the hallway.
i didn't have to hear him to know what he said;
"if it hurts so bad, why didn't you have Joy take you to the hospital
earlier? you had all day, right?" and her reply;
"i didn't know it would be this bad. i didn't know."
tears started welling immediately. i got up and paced,
subjected my sleepy pink-pajama-clad mother to an interrogation on symptoms
chain-smoked cigarettes and wailed to a., my love, the only one i trust now.
as soon as the benzodiazepines started to kick in, however, i slowed
rationalized that i must be hyper-sensitive,
due to all of the seemingly urgent medical bickering in my family -
due to the seemingly coincidental parallels and the overwhelming frequency -
due to my dwindling faith in adults' ability to step up and do something.
somehow the health of my most fiercely loved ones
has been placed in my hands... but i am just a girl
a scared little mouse in the face of death. i will be crushed
under all this weight.
it made a dull cracking sound, did not bounce.
i touched her scalp and felt a lump start to swell under my fingers
the size of a robin's egg, then a hen's, then a goose's.
i tried to take her to the hospital but she was
determined to continue her day; "it doesn't hurt that bad."
so she left, and i warily went about my day,
going on 20 hours of consciousness.
i napped mid-afternoon and dreamed of brains swelling,
woke with a yelp and startled my boyfriend, who gently shushed me
back into a state of hazy calm, love, and forgetfulness.
tonight, while tossing fitfully under covers,
shivering in convulsions from untamed opiate withdrawals,
i heard my dad's indecipherable murmur in the hallway.
i didn't have to hear him to know what he said;
"if it hurts so bad, why didn't you have Joy take you to the hospital
earlier? you had all day, right?" and her reply;
"i didn't know it would be this bad. i didn't know."
tears started welling immediately. i got up and paced,
subjected my sleepy pink-pajama-clad mother to an interrogation on symptoms
chain-smoked cigarettes and wailed to a., my love, the only one i trust now.
as soon as the benzodiazepines started to kick in, however, i slowed
rationalized that i must be hyper-sensitive,
due to all of the seemingly urgent medical bickering in my family -
due to the seemingly coincidental parallels and the overwhelming frequency -
due to my dwindling faith in adults' ability to step up and do something.
somehow the health of my most fiercely loved ones
has been placed in my hands... but i am just a girl
a scared little mouse in the face of death. i will be crushed
under all this weight.