Heya. The first line is the title in this one...a little tool to make it feel as if there's no concrete beginning. A powerful little sucker. Hope you have a good day. Love to you, 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 yellow, crumpled note
to striking Dillon,
the comic from the west.
Skin half-covered in ink,
neck marked with faded anime,
right arm covered in cartoon skulls,
he has one perfect, thousand-dollar,
black and blue sleeve.
At eleven-thirty,
he leaves behind
his wife, his silver Fender, and a devoted,
starstruck girlfriend.
Ladies drink Coke Zero
in the waiting room.
Second shift. Back home, noontime,
the black, full-bred Pit Bull
still barks for him, waking
the newborn. Shutting their eyes,
his twin girls draw horses,
pulling surprise crayons
from the assorted pack.
By one p.m.,
wearing one taupe stiletto,
and a torn, purple, silk linen
suit, formerly flawless Carly
jerkily dances down the drive,
hitching her first ride
to rehab. In the adjacent, private room,
second-hand-close to three
in the afternoon, Aaron,
the lean machine,
the mechanic with curls,
falls into his first seizure,
and the frantic team rolls him
away. Following
them down the hall, Carly
peeks in at the tubes,
studying his bare chest,
his ribs, and his dirt-lined cheeks,
still smeared with grease and oil.
Suddenly shuddering sober, she
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
