to feel the same, and knowing that it

shouldn’t.

Okay, so I wrote myself out of the dark

but I can feel it creeping back in.

Is it too late to outrun my fate?

OBSERVATION

I don’t know it’s the last time which is, by nature,

what makes it a last time. When you can predict the

future every juncture

splinters

into smaller junctures,

last time after last time after last time. When you

don’t, can’t know, what awaits you, the moment just

is. It breathes. Looks around.

I look around. Pitbulls and Parolees plays on the

television, our conversation punctuated by barks and

howls. An off-white curtain separates her from

another patient, a patient I never see the face of. In an

emergency she’d be the first one out of the room.

I had to cut through a lobby, take an elevator, and

walk down a hallway to get here. I turned right into

the doorway. I will turn left to leave. If I write about

the setting it gives me an excuse to turn away from its

center. The catalyst, my grandmother.

She holds my hand, briefly, and doesn’t sound like a

person that’s known almost eighty Februarys, almost

eighty Valentine’s Days. That’s a lot of love, I want to

say, a lot of snow, but then I’d have to admit I’m not

listening as well as I should because I’m assuming

that there’s endless time to say everything I need to

say.

And why shouldn’t I? She’s healthy, active. She goes

to the doctor. She knows who I am.

She asks about [redacted].

How was your date with [redacted]?

“We should look into getting you birth control.”

I laugh. In my memory I slow this down, freeze

frame. I love her. In slow motion I love her fiercely.

Later I will regret spending so much time talking

about [redacted]. I will hate myself for describing in

detail the meal [redacted] cooked for us instead of

saying thank you. Thank you for every insignificant

thing. Thank you for leaving me notes on the kitchen

counter with chocolate whenever I go to bed sad.

Thank you for the singing toothbrushes and telling me

that my writing is beautiful. Even then, when it wasn’t

quite beautiful. Just loud. At 19 I needed everyone to

share my bellyaches. At 19 I walk out of the room that

becomes our final private memory and think what if

this is the last time and promptly ignore it.

Look at her, sitting up with a pillow behind her.

Orange juice in a sealed cup on the side table.

This is not what an ending looks like, waving at me

from the doorway. Gown catching on a thin blanket. It

can’t be. It isn’t. I turn left. I keep going. I keep going

until I can breathe.

PANTOUM FOR WAITING ROOMS