Monday, June 4, 2018

Jamboree at Midterm

"just when you think you've got it down, your heart in pieces on the ground--" Pat Benatar

I no longer have anything to anticipate when this care worker inserts his key into the lock, no more daunting seduction attempts while my body lies naked beneath disposal peach underpads, nor any rationalizations on my part. Obfuscation seems to be an innate part of his personality, and maybe that is par for the course if you live in the West Oak Lane section of the city, but I regret the small moments, particularly his seizure of my wrist when I reached up to turn on my lamp behind this HP Pavillion. That was new to me, at 56. Things you are supposed to experience as a schoolgirl. I thought it meant there was a pathway out of defining myself as patient and her nursing aide, and I thought too high, climbing whatever particular ladder rung. I could write, as I normally would, that the next African American male who so much as makes an edgewise gesture will be heading into a massacre, but this is sandpaper rhetoric against the fact that I wanted to be part of a couple again. Instead I have to live with this man, who cracked me open, then reburied my body, until I can find the time to make an exit strategy, or he beats me to it, in my own knowledge, too well versed, of independent living.

There is more to contort. I am too weary with sleep, clinging with broken fingernails to a small happiness intersection, I thought something was there between us. I genuinely did.






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