Karen George

THERE IS A FOLDING INTO THE SELF WHICH OCCURS
~ Inspired by this line in Naomi Shihab Nye's poem
"Walking Down Blanco Road at Midnight"

when one hits slippery bits of time, junctures
you can’t process, as when you fall

on a hill of wet grass, the wobbly feel of bones
loosed in your leg, a whooze swims through you.

Or seconds it takes to discern the words, Come as soon
as you can, the gut slug of knowing your husband is dead.

Watching ballots tallied, the gravid instant
you realize who will be president for four years.

The gap, the hinge between driving home
from deep-water aerobics, the braid of your body

worn and revived. The vault of luminous blue above you,
the ribcage clouds, one like a snapped wishbone.

Your cellphone rings through your car's Bluetooth.
Your heart spurs when you see the screen display

the name of your mother's assisted living place. She flung
herself, in a wheelchair, down a flight of stairs. "Deliberately,"

the director elongates the word, as if that isn't enough,
repeats it, each syllable a jabbed blade.

The reflex to shutter your eyes, crumple, shunt
the image of her tumble, the misery, the grit

to hurtle herself in what she hoped
would be her final moments.

I try not to imagine what she felt, whether
she resisted the urge to clasp

the wheelchair arms, to curl
into a ball to brace against impact.

Every night as I collapse into sleep,
I try not to relive her freefall,

her crash, the gall of once again
failing to kill herself.

O, if it were only easier to spill out
of this world, to cell by cell undo yourself

back to the beginning, before your hurl
into life—where you hovered in liquid luxury.