To the Mercy Killers

It has been a poetry-post overload. I have been spending too much time reading my old book of poems, but I am enjoying it. Some poems, some phrases, some lines, are on microfilm stored inside my granite skull. Earthquakes rattle them up, and the words reverberate on my bones, but they are safe and constant inside my head. They are retrievable.

December, last year, I retrieved this:

If ever mercy move you murder me,
I pray you, kindly killers, let me live.
Never conspire with death to set me free,
but let me know such life as pain can give.
Even though I be a clot, and aching clench,
a stub, a stump, a butt, a scab, a knob,
a screaming pain, a putrefying stench,
still let me live, so long as life shall throb.
Even though I turn such traitor to myself
as beg to die, do not accomplice me.
Even though I seem not human, a mute shelf
of glucose, bottled blood, machinery
to swell the lung and pump the heart- even so,
do not put out my life. Let me still glow.
-Dudley Randall

It was mid-December. The Lake House was cold. Anika was sleeping in an unfamiliar crib at the foot of my unfamiliar, squeaky brass bed. Her crib, or maybe the floor, was slanted and she kept rolling into the side and waking up crying. I wondered if she, too, was starting to feel sick like I was.

During her short periods of sleep I would peek out the sheer curtains to the moonlit lake and crusty snow. I was keenly aware of the index card and pen I had placed on the nightstand. My thoughts were racing and I couldn't bring myself to jot anything down. Alex's memorial was in the morning and I was going to speak.

The cold was pouring through the single-paned window.
And I was getting sicker.

Brandon lay awake, motionless beside me. He had been helping with Anika and was aware of my impending doom. He knew, as I did, that I would soon be in the throes of food poisoning, yet he was typically unaware of the storm blowing up inside of my soul.

I soon got violently ill. I went down the hall and vomited in the toilet. "This is the first time", I thought, "I have ever tried to vomit quietly." I was in the top of an old A-frame home and was worried about my family scattered throughout. It didn't end with vomiting. This was the kind of sick you remember forever. The kind, like childbirth, you remember but can never recall the severity of.

I collapsed on the linoleum and curled up next to a heater vent that was underneath the cabinets. My chilled and shivering body lay there awaiting the next wave of vomiting. I remembered how Alex used to call this the "fetus position" instead of the "fetal position".

"It's between the In N Out Burger or that italian sausage.", I thought. Something hadn't agreed with me. I was suspicious it was grief.

My thoughts took me to the last time I was this sick .... It was December, four years ago. It was another A-frame Lake Arrowhead house, cold enough that I saw my breath in it once... Alex's house. It was the Christmas of the epic storm and we were trapped on the mountain. One of my tacos from our favorite eatery tasted funky but I ate it anyway. This was also to be the remember-forever type of sick. I was on my way back from the bathroom, almost to my bed, and I blacked out. I was alert for the first half of the collapse, trying to steer my heavy body away from the nightstand I saw coming towards my head. Blackness. My head hit the hardwood floor instead.

Alex must have heard the thump because when I woke up he was there. He frantically asked me what happened and if I was okay. (Have you ever stubbed your toe, been solicited for feelings, and snapped at someone?) I must have snapped something at him in my agony because he turned and left the room. I clearly had hurt his sensitive feelings.

So many small regrets.
So many big regrets.
Total loss.

"It could..." I thought... "It could be the grief."

There on the linoleum in the fetus position, I prayed. The only thing that came out was "Make it stop. Dear God, make it stop."

I don't remember getting sleepy. I had fallen asleep there on the bare floor. It was still dark out and I didn't know how long I had been there. I nervously remembered what had happened and quickly took inventory. "Do I need to throw up?" - "Can I roll over?" It had miraculously passed. Never in my life has food poisoning lasted less than 24 hours. I couldn't believe it. I felt okay. I felt comforted.

I nibbled on cookies all day and eagerly spoke at Alex's memorial.
It was a miracle.

Mortality.
Our corruption.
My grief.
My sick body.
This mouldering pain inside my flesh.
A clot. And aching clench.
A stub.
A stump.
A butt.
A scab.
A knob.
A screaming pain.
A putrefying stench.
Even though I seem not human....
still let me live, so long as life shall throb.
Dear God, do not put out my life.
Let me still glow.

___________________________________________________________


The Lake House.... mere hours before sickness ensued.