SONNE
Between cigarettes she slips, mother killed herself
She talks about a group home and her real name
The one she does not use
Because it is old, fuddy-duddy, the name of the island where she was born
I never ask how she did it
But I imagine pills
Black and white photographs taken by the ocean
White fences dunes and lawn chairs
Short hair, sunglasses
Classic cars, red interiors
I imagine her with cocktails
Entertaining her blonde haired little girl with gothic rhymes
Of sitters stealing babies from cradles
I see her dead on a bathroom floor at midnight
A tulip sink clean enough to drink from.
We go to her apartment
She pulls out shoeboxes full of journals
One is covered in cutouts of Angelina Jolie
She says I don’t give a fuck what anyone says
I love her
She plays Jeff Buckley then Leonard Cohen then Tom Waits on repeat
The evening goes on with her talking
Tristram Shandy is a favorite
People are fucks
The magnets are housewives and sarcasm
I work well with others as long as they leave me the fuck alone
She is holding a ladle
She goes on about a man she loves
Great sex except a woman got in the way
We get drunk again
She shows me more lives tucked away in boxes – photographs, clippings, cards.
Weeks later we meet at the hotel bar across the street from the hospital
Her father is dying and I did not know she had a father
I cannot piece together her history
Her mother is dead, she killed herself
She lived in a group home for girls
But her father is here now dying in Boston
He is septic and his liver is failing
She says he was not a drinker
She says he is only sixty
It is cold, winter and raining.
In the hospital I must pass through levels of security
To walk around a circular hallway to his room
He is covered in blankets and tubes
It is obvious this man will die
To me he tinkered with 350 engines, never denied salt air, said: winter is for the living, go
out and revel!
I sit in a waiting room designed for children
Little chairs and tables
Cardboard books about farms and animal people
There are no windows here
It is only time before I am sick
A nurse offers me a cup of water and a cheese stick.
Her father dies
And once again she is an orphan in my mind
She travels to Key West then Puerto Rico
Lives on an island with navy bombed soil
Its toxic metals hidden in produce and history
Because to see it
There’s water’s clarity and silhouette sunsets
Draping heat
It’s too hot to run
Too hot to eat
Just drink to each counted day
Several more and more moments of reflection
A place to put memories in neon trees
Each iguana a foreign comfort
We cannot take away our pains so we bring them to other places
Harbor them where they cannot be seen so clearly on our faces.