They kept feeding the fluids into her
And they kept not coming out
As her weight rose
From 180 until it topped out
At around 270
Every wrinkle disappeared from her face
And her eyes were so swollen
That the doctors couldn’t open then
To check her pupils
Every inch of her was stretched
To the point of breaking
And her breath
Laboring through all that water
Grew [...]
We called her Nurse Sunshine
She had all the skills
And the thorough immersion
In her job
That you look for
But she didn’t have a single
Positive
Thing to say
Between her and my idiot
Drama queen
Busybody
Cousin
My own heart was starting to pound
False optimism
Is all I needed
And they weren’t even willing to give that
As my mother’s weight rose
With each passing hour
Nurse Sunshine panicked
Over [...]
My mother’s heart could not
Would not
Beat the way it was supposed to
They had shocked her several times
More than a couple times
Trying to get things back in order
But it was not going to happen
So they put her in a coma
They shut just about everything down
That wasn’t shutting down already
To let her body get back into sinus [...]
The waiting room was crowded
With relative of all kinds
The ones I liked
The ones I didn’t
And we sat there together
Waiting for word
She was in surgery again
The third time in three days I was told
They were taking out her left colon
Sitting there
Things didn’t seem quite as bad
Surgery was better
Than nothing to do but wait
And the doctor nicely [...]
I wasn’t sure if it was the phone
Cutting in and out
Or my father
Unable to complete a sentence
But I knew
It took me three minutes
To get out of the building
Into my car
And onto I-10
For the long blank space
Between Phoenix and Tucson
It my mind it was already over
She would be gone before I got there
I felt it
I expected [...]
My mother danced at my sister’s wedding
Probably the first time
In a long time
We aren’t a family of dancers
Someone took a picture
And it stuck around
In her hospital room
For a long time
They put off the surgery
Until after the wedding
On purpose
And I don’t know
If that was good or bad planning
Considering what came after
I went by the house the [...]
The blackjack dealer scowls a little
I can’t tell if she is angry or confused
As she stares at my winning hand
I’m at the beginners table for the dealers
She’s been doing it for maybe three days
And she doesn’t have it down yet
I don’t care as long as the count is right
Or at least in my favor
But the [...]
The freeway passes through the onions fields near Eloy
Making the car smell like sour-cream and chives potato chips
The road passes next to Rooster Cogburn’s Ostrich Ranch
With its thundering heard of long-legged birds
And the flashing video of the Indian casino signs
Every day brings me past the factory outlet mall outside Casa Grande
And the auto graveyard at [...]
