I beg it all to stop, the vertigo, the drunk
                need to step off. For worse, the nurses tell me.

Nearly wingless, they crouch in the sleet,
                elongated voids, their heads bent under

 

the ceiling. They are out of place, the color
                of rain that drums sleep into you, tacks falling

 

on roofs. They begin to nod off, a half dozen
                aunts who toss me like a stone in a river

 

of vows. They touch me when I least want it,
                jealous (I think) of my breasts and eyes.

 

They’re stretched so thin, their faces pulled to a gaunt
                sneer, smeared with perfumes swiped from tacky

 

residue in bottles. They’re constructed of the anger
                of children who aren’t little suns, aren’t beloved

 

at all. Then, one day, they are gone. I am my own
                hands again, and death an animal on a dry pine bed.

 

In a canoe on the Delaware River,
                my son and I once slowed to watch a black bear,

 

lanky and plush, splash over river grass round
                the point, startling the swimmers from their griefs.

 

 

---

 

 

MIRANDE BISSELL is a teacher and poet who lives in the Patapsco River Valley, west of Baltimore. Her first book of poems, Stalin at the Opera, was selected by Diane Seuss as winner of the Ghost Peach Press prize, and was published in 2021.

 

The art that appears alongside this piece is by GRANT RAUN.