Michelle Reale
Temporal-Spacio Drama
You told me I needed my very own disease. I was hot then cold. The effects were cumulative. I know how trauma is often undisclosed, underreported. And you know that the note you wrote me was not a love letter. It was not even close. It was a prescription , a directive. Do this. Then that. Not all problems can be solved by excising them with a sushi knife . For instance, those deep eyes in those potatoes like so many shrunken heads were no match for the swift turn of your agile wrist. It was a talent you were proud of. You tried other methods on me. As an antidote, I petrified fruit. I fossilized bone. I wet what was dry and begged for forgiveness you said I did not deserve. But this is how the living die: one grave disappointment at a time. Indifference like an exploding bullet from a gun takes residence in my soft spots. Is this a contradiction? Then it is a contradiction. I can no longer complain because now I’ve got a heart with folds like an Italian accordion and have become the type of woman that calls people honey while you continue to sharpen your drawerful of knives. Life goes on. I will prance around in my mother’s ancient high heels and take notice of the ruptures in the sidewalk caused by the roots of trees. Praise a lifetime of confronting the hardness of walls. Let the effects eventually eat me from the inside out.
Michelle Reale is an academic librarian on faculty at Arcadia University in the suburbs of Philadelphia. She is the author of four fiction and prose poem chapbooks. She has been twice nominated for a pushcart prize. She maintains a blog on immigration, migration and social justice in the Sicilian context at www.sempresicilia.wordpress.com
Return to November 2012 Edition
You told me I needed my very own disease. I was hot then cold. The effects were cumulative. I know how trauma is often undisclosed, underreported. And you know that the note you wrote me was not a love letter. It was not even close. It was a prescription , a directive. Do this. Then that. Not all problems can be solved by excising them with a sushi knife . For instance, those deep eyes in those potatoes like so many shrunken heads were no match for the swift turn of your agile wrist. It was a talent you were proud of. You tried other methods on me. As an antidote, I petrified fruit. I fossilized bone. I wet what was dry and begged for forgiveness you said I did not deserve. But this is how the living die: one grave disappointment at a time. Indifference like an exploding bullet from a gun takes residence in my soft spots. Is this a contradiction? Then it is a contradiction. I can no longer complain because now I’ve got a heart with folds like an Italian accordion and have become the type of woman that calls people honey while you continue to sharpen your drawerful of knives. Life goes on. I will prance around in my mother’s ancient high heels and take notice of the ruptures in the sidewalk caused by the roots of trees. Praise a lifetime of confronting the hardness of walls. Let the effects eventually eat me from the inside out.
Michelle Reale is an academic librarian on faculty at Arcadia University in the suburbs of Philadelphia. She is the author of four fiction and prose poem chapbooks. She has been twice nominated for a pushcart prize. She maintains a blog on immigration, migration and social justice in the Sicilian context at www.sempresicilia.wordpress.com
Return to November 2012 Edition