Strict and bound
as an analog watch,
Aristotelian narrative
calls for a probable
necessary sequence.
It is suicide season.
The calendar taunts
with year three’s death dance.
Dialysate swills
in my abdomen.
Long arrows of surgery
nudge under my ribs
trace my hipbones
garland my navel.
Along my lower back
divots of biopsy
freckle into sickles
when I bend over.
Driving over the city bridge
quirk or quark humming
I might be spared.
My grandmother loved
singing O What a Beautiful City
as she sorted her pills.
The anesthetic mask
shatters linear discipline:
Trotting the deep path by mosslight,
son is a dark-haired universe
in the crook of my right arm.
Five pound blood-hum
prayer and verse ripping
my skull pure off.
Time has me scalped
kissing the whorls of my brain
with frank red lips.
Rolling up from surgery
I look down to my wrist
where someone has clasped
my watch on loosely.
Copyright © 2019 by Laura Da'. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on November 14, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets.