Defending G-d and Disco Lights

I was 31 years old when I learned I have a pretty smile. Beautiful tapestry, if I pull the right threads it’ll all unravel. And it’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay now.

They tell us, this is shrinking, that is growing. They tell us a lot of things. Sometimes we listen, but mostly not. We’re stubborn that way.

I was supposed to go to the grocery store. Instead I called Mom from a park in the suburbs, one I’d forgotten about a long time ago. Where I used to go, straight out of Texas and still in my work clothes, to watch the snow.

I'm at a bar downtown. Didn’t know where I was going, but the music they play here reminds me of October. The real one, before the world fell apart, again and again.

I don’t know what I was drinking

But I found something in the song you were singing

Somewhere downtown

That made the world hurt less

Despite my best intentions

Of holding everything

Sometimes I find myself defending G-d. To my mother, once. As if G-d needs me to defend him. I was just grateful that she’s alive.

Sometimes I find myself flipping him off from the freeway, and regretting it later. Can it be both?

And when the world broke down behind my eyes

I held that song

Rules don’t exist anymore. I’m driving around with nowhere to be. I come from a long line of powerful women. Who survived the war. Who survived surviving. Don’t try to stop me, when it all falls apart I can be anything.

Bacardi rum and disco lights

No one knows where I am tonight

And that’s alright

Because your poetry seems to hurt as much as mine

So we heal ourselves in the space between the silence

I’m pretty sure my life is falling apart. At least that’s what I told my accountant this morning.

I forget if today’s appointment is the third or the fourth this week. Zman simchateinu, they tell us. And I am, mostly. On the same day the doctors will propose a new treatment – is it radiation, what is radiation, is it a new brand of chemo, what do they do to her body, will they just operate, what are blood clots anyway – she had an appointment with the news crew in the morning, to share her story. To film her running, but the telecaster couldn’t keep up, just wait here a moment and I’ll ask my questions standing.

So he asks about cancer and running and our favorite pink sneakers.

And I ask the impossible. Time and again.