Kelley Beeson
THE LONGER WAY HOME
A near-stillness, a hovering cloud-cooking,
storm-stirring stillness. There is
a hallway, rimmed with faint artificial light.
I am at one end and there is no other end.
Let’s sit together and watch it all disintegrate.
I’ll narrate while the mist rolls in.
While fog and the faint sound of a whining dog roll in.
There are days when throwing myself
down a flight of narrow concrete steps sounds_______.
Don’t correct me. Pain has robbed me and yes I am surprised.
My scalp’s million follicles are on fire.
They bend toward some binding.
It has to be a binding doesn’t it, is that right?
Doctors ask: is it tension, a pulsing, a throbbing?
My answer: It is iron at its hottest.
I am rubbed raw, folded and ½ gone.
Do you hear the neighbor’s sprinkler?
A pace then a quickening. A pace then a quickening.
There is a magnitude. Travels on vessels and byways.
An oil-spill, spreading and poisoning.
Is that the saddest thing you’ve heard?
Pain and I take the longer way home.
My hands are dense paws. Joints ripping.
I don’t know how I evaporated, became this filmy residue.
I am trapped in clumsy hours and minutes.
I can barely watch the rest of you living.