Separation
by Madelyn Parker
As my grandfather recovers in the dog days of summer
my grandmother sleeps on the hospital floor. She found two ants
in her kitchen and said putting honey in a ziploc would keep it out of mine.
I have a “friend,” I say—a woman that I wrapped around my body
like a netting. My tongue doesn’t press where it should when I swallow.
It’s forced my bite apart. When she doesn’t want me
heaving doesn’t get her out. In his rehab hospital room
I wonder if my body could make her sleep, even if insomnia is not that simple.
All that I can tell my family about this is that I’ve been killing
isopods at the end of the follicular, the full. Clubhauling
and untouched. I’m offered sandwich meat in purgatorial shrouds
to make dinner on a wheeled and sterile table.
I haven’t done anything
but eat these long drives. You are so
good, my grandmother says, you are so good, my girl. I pretend
to make the meal. I wallow in the setup
of a joke conveyed from one state border to another
in circles of wet road, reaching as if I could touch around the block
mildew in my nose. I’ll want to crawl into her
and keep the food down and pray tectonic and sing pop songs in love
for a mountain or the moon or a moth on the deadbolt