Howdy. The first line is the title in this one, a tactic poets use sometimes to blur the beginning. :) Thought it worked here. Hope you like the piece. I just totally rewrote it. I've been working on this for some time, and it feels finished now. Hope you have a good day. Love, C.A.
They revive her. At half past nine,
on a gray morning, Merrily, the middle-aged actress,
reappears from the northern emergency room.
At eleven, in the southern hall, recalling sixth grade,
she shakily scrawls down her number, passing
a crumpled note to handsome Dillon. From the west,
covered in ink, he is marked with cartoons, the perfect,
thousand-dollar sleeves. At eleven-thirty, he leaves
behind his wife, his Fender, and a devoted, starstruck
girlfriend. Ladies drink Coke Zero in the waiting room.
Back home, come noontime, second shift, the black,
full bred Shepherd still barks for him, suddenly waking
the newborn. The twin girls draw horses, shutting
their eyes, pulling surprise crayons from the assorted
pack. One p.m. arrives, and shit-faced, flawless Carly
dances down the drive, hitching her tenth ride to rehab.
In the room next to her, second-hand-close to three
in the afternoon, Aaron, the lean machine, the mechanic
with curls, begins having seizures. Carly peeks in
at the tubes and remembers. Fourteen years ago,
on the playground, he shook sand from his shoes.
Beside the burning metal slide, in the space between
the eastern monkey bars, he kissed her once.
-- C.A. MacConnell
