flor de calabaza

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“i think you’re wrong,” lydia said to me
the other morning, after the first night of leanne
being back in the hospital.

“about what?”

“about mommy coming home,” she said.

“no, i’m right,” i said. “she’s coming home.”

it’s been days now and she’s not getting better.
in fact, people are starting to get worried.

and so it’s me and liddy, together at home,
sometimes friends stopping by, but mostly
just me and her.

and let me just say that in some ways you’re never truly a father
until the day you sit in the bathroom with your daughter
collecting stool samples together.

and strangely, amidst all of this, things have been fairly normal.
and that’s what scares me.
how unaffected she seems, and i seem, by all of this.

in a way it’d be easy to say that we’ve adapted,
and i suppose that’s exactly what it is.
but what does that mean?

that she’s used to her mother being sick.

i don’t like it.

—–

i think i remember the place.
a small taco stand where the woman was making
tortillas hecho de mano.

i could be wrong, it could’ve been here,
a salad i made, anything really.

but i think for some reason it was that taco stand.
the little bowls of salsa and mushrooms and, yes,
flor de calabaza, with little spoons.

how the woman filled the tortillas with the chopped
up squash blossom, and how (yes, i’m sure i’m too much a lousy poet
to let this go), how the blossom opened inside of leanne.

—–

it’s been too long now.
too long to have a fever.
too long to not eat.
too long for it just to be e. coli maybe.

and, as i wrote before, she’s not getting any better yet.

—–

i took lydia to see her yesterday.
i made her promise not to try and hug her or kiss her,
that she had to wear a gown and gloves and that we had
to leave quickly.

“do you think you can do that?” i asked.
“yes”

and so we went and i wrapped her up in the ridiculously large
yellow gown and walked her into the hospital room
where leanne was feverish in the bed.

she sat in a chair and watched the tv.
her one transgression: a kiss on the knee
before we left.

and that was it.

—–

—–

last january: cancer
this january: e. coli
do not think it hasn’t crossed my mind that next january
i should start a new blog titled:
follow lingling as she gives genital warts a beatdown.
or an ear infection.

oh, how lovely that would be.

i want people to know how much i hate this.
how much i hate having something to write about.
how indulgent i think it is.
how disgusted i am by it (but how writing is the only thing
i know how to do that will make me feel any better).
how i’m exhausted by the life and death of it all.
how i want to live in the trivial for a while.
just a while.

how i want so desperately for lydia to be wrong,
and for me to be right about her coming home
and staying there.

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Filed under adaptation, anniversary illnesses