Summer of 1995~ a poem by Erieann Corrigan
Summer of 1995
The way I have heard it, your sister
drove you home, then asked you to walk the dog.
While good sadie led you down the street and back,
your mother called mid-flight en route from California to New York. And when you came in again
and bent to unclip the leash from the collar, your sister said Mom's on the phone and you said nothing. You only closed the cellar door behind you as you went down. Then they heard the noise
which, to your mother on the phone, might have
sounded like one burner on the gas stove igniting
or a truck backfiring streets and streets away. Your mother said Check and so your sister checked
and found you bleeding with the gun in your lap.
And for the next two hours, your mother sat on the plane with a policeman on the line tethering her to earth. I was at a garden party with my new boyfriend. He was Teaching me to make torches out of cattails and kerosene and the corsage he'd bought me covered the scars on my wrist.
It was July andI was pushing away plates again, swallowing those black fat pills but I remember smiling at Ben, buckled into his hotshot car and thinking I hadn't smiled at any boy like that since you.
I used to believe that any harm that came to you would visit me also- a sudden crippling pain, an eclipse of brightening light.
But I felt nothing. And the next day, Ben and I spread the local paper out on my kitchen table, looking for the movie listings, and a slim column on the front page rose up: North Brunswick man shot and I only read it becuase that's where you lived- in the sprawling neighborhood as secure as a tiny national park and then I read your address and then your name and I did not understand who was screaming until my father covered my mouth with his hand. The next autumn, Ben would say goodbye and drive the little red car into a tree and my father would do the same thing with his big hand until I bit his palm. But that July it was you and I wouldn't let another man touch me besides my father until I knew you would live. My Mom ushered Ben out the door saying sorry things.
And in the morning, I sat in the hospital between your two hoarse sisters and saw your mother, the judge, with her hands tangled in her hair.
Oh Daniel- by the time you can hold a spoon again, everyone who knows you will have become meeker. And you'll peer into a mirror at your new, uneven face, believing that you are the only one who has changed.
The way I have heard it, your sister
drove you home, then asked you to walk the dog.
While good sadie led you down the street and back,
your mother called mid-flight en route from California to New York. And when you came in again
and bent to unclip the leash from the collar, your sister said Mom's on the phone and you said nothing. You only closed the cellar door behind you as you went down. Then they heard the noise
which, to your mother on the phone, might have
sounded like one burner on the gas stove igniting
or a truck backfiring streets and streets away. Your mother said Check and so your sister checked
and found you bleeding with the gun in your lap.
And for the next two hours, your mother sat on the plane with a policeman on the line tethering her to earth. I was at a garden party with my new boyfriend. He was Teaching me to make torches out of cattails and kerosene and the corsage he'd bought me covered the scars on my wrist.
It was July andI was pushing away plates again, swallowing those black fat pills but I remember smiling at Ben, buckled into his hotshot car and thinking I hadn't smiled at any boy like that since you.
I used to believe that any harm that came to you would visit me also- a sudden crippling pain, an eclipse of brightening light.
But I felt nothing. And the next day, Ben and I spread the local paper out on my kitchen table, looking for the movie listings, and a slim column on the front page rose up: North Brunswick man shot and I only read it becuase that's where you lived- in the sprawling neighborhood as secure as a tiny national park and then I read your address and then your name and I did not understand who was screaming until my father covered my mouth with his hand. The next autumn, Ben would say goodbye and drive the little red car into a tree and my father would do the same thing with his big hand until I bit his palm. But that July it was you and I wouldn't let another man touch me besides my father until I knew you would live. My Mom ushered Ben out the door saying sorry things.
And in the morning, I sat in the hospital between your two hoarse sisters and saw your mother, the judge, with her hands tangled in her hair.
Oh Daniel- by the time you can hold a spoon again, everyone who knows you will have become meeker. And you'll peer into a mirror at your new, uneven face, believing that you are the only one who has changed.