Sentenced
It’s more about the regrets than the years,
all that could have been done to change
the trajectory of this unfathomable tragedy.
I count the I could haves like you count
the days, hours, minutes, seconds, insects
crawling, flying, alive or dead in your cell.
You keep lists on state-issued paper, these
lists give you a modicum of control. Turn
them into poems, into airplanes, into flowers,
origami animals, turn all of the suffering
into something beautiful. We all need to
turn this into something like the bird who
makes puno from the apple cores and
orange peels, a trade from the monthly
allowance mom brings you, thirty-five pounds
of guilt: fresh vegetables, fruits, beef jerky,
chocolate bars and candies. She doesn’t
consider what men will trade for these
small gifts. We all have to protect ourselves
from others, from ourselves. It’s less about
the years and more about learning to forgive
ourselves for what we did or didn’t do.
I avoid visiting, can’t be face-to-face with
my self-imposed sentence staring back
at me from behind an uncrossable line.
My sentence is all day and a night,
a starless, sleepless, somber night where
morning walks in like a sadistic guard,
raking his flashlight along the bars
Wake up sweetie, time to start another day.
327 Days After Sentencing
The snow, falling all day, makes me
think about you in your cell,
in your head, a clam in a shell,
high or low tide, murky water
that hides sharp rocks
Where do I even begin shoveling?
I dream of us clamming in
the Shinnecock Bay beside the
Ponquogue Bridge using
bare feet to find shells like we did
when we were kids, like we did
with our kids. Now snow falls
heavy like the relentless fear
that I won’t be able to protect
my own children from monsters
disguised as people
they were taught to trust.
Forgive me
for telling a new acquaintance
that I am an only child,
for wanting to forget you’re alive
while simultaneously wanting
to pretend this shovel is a clam rake
that the snow is the bay. Forgive me
for making icicles hanging outside
my window into steel bars,
for not being a better person
for letting all the snowfall
before starting to clear it,
for snapping the handle of my shovel
like how a lifetime ago
I watched you shuck a clam
and snap that blade right off.
Talking About Mental Illness with my Eight-Year-Old on a
Snowy April Afternoon
I watch a cardinal use its orange beak to dig through snow
for seeds.
A knight for a fish, my daughter asks, is a knight
worth more than a fish?
She means bishop but says fish.
The snow was supposed to stop falling by noon, but it's a
quarter of three.
When she asks me how people know if they’re hearing voices
that others
don’t hear, I tell her two rooks are more powerful than a
queen.
I mean I don’t know, but point to the rook she is about to
lose.
There must be at least six inches of accumulation.
On television, she heard siblings of schizophrenics are at
higher risk for psychosis.
I ask her why she doesn’t watch cartoons anymore and in one
move she puts me in check.
Peel
As I remove the skin from a clementine, you tell me
you may drop the Civics class you’re enrolled in
through the prison degree program because
it gets so loud on your block that you can’t think,
the indescribable sound of pent-up guilt is cacophonic.
I don’t tell you my husband brings our daughters
outside whenever you call. There are only a few
dirty mounds of snow left. I watch my girls run
straight to them with their good sneakers on;
I don’t tell you this either, instead I suggest earplugs,
meditation, humming to drown out the background
noises. You laugh and ask me to send you pictures
of everyone and I say I will, but you know I won’t.
I am pulling apart what you say section by section,
your words seep into invisible cuts on my heart
and sting. I imagine the inmates in your class
discussing citizenship, the rights and duties they
forfeited. Outside, my daughters bury themselves
in dirty snow as if it’s beach sand. You tell me how
no one else comes to see you besides a preacher
who reads to you from the bible then quizzes you
on the material covered. You tell him your meds
make you forget, even though the truth is you
aren’t listening. Really you are trying to tell me
there has to be someone listening to your prayers,
that you need me. I place the clementine down
on the counter. I look outside again and watch my
daughters sculpting tiny snowmen with their bare
hands. Hey, you
say, look out the window at the sun,
tell me you don’t believe there’s a God behind that.
Sweet Fruit
Peeling a Mango with a paring knife
on a snowy April morning, allowing the
blade to meet my thumb, I think about
my brother; I always think about
my brother, especially when handling hope.
Somewhere sweet fruit grows year-round,
but not in the cell he is confined to.
Overripe mangoes smell and taste like fish
to me. The shape of the island we grew
up on, the shape of the shame for a horrendous
act I didn’t commit, the shape of the guilt
I shouldn’t feel. My daughters, at the
kitchen counter holding the slices up to
their hungry mouths like bait,
don’t know how my brother haunts me
like that weakfish I pulled from the
Long Island Sound, three hooks
dangling from its mouth, how against
my father’s wishes, I cut the line, yes,
I cut the line
and I set it free.
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