Untitled #1
Maybe dying is like getting arrested.
And they don't give you even a second of orientation.
Maybe they clap your feet, right off, onto the nails.
Or they impale you on a skewer
half-a-second before, half-a-second after
two of the others.
Or maybe dying is like going to the doctor.
Maybe there's a receptionist and a waiting room.
And maybe there's the assistant.
And she explains the procedure, holds your hand, shows you diagrams.
Yes, maybe she tells you first
what they're going to do.
Childhood dream:
We had already killed Aunt Faygie twice
and now Rozzy was making us do it again.
And Faygie was cooperating.
"Come on," I screamed. "We're in enough trouble."
But the two of them just kept laughing and injecting that poison into
Faygie's leg.
The dream ended in the courtroom.
Faygie faced the jury. "Rozzy and Marion killed me three times and I'm
going
to
have them hanged."
Seeing me tremble, she relented. "Well, okay, I'm not going to have
them
hanged.
But they did kill me three times."
Rozzy WANTED to be tied up.
And Frances and Margaret were happy to do the tying.
And I. . . I stood and stared
from some odd height
as Rozzy seated herself on that three-and-a-half-legged stool.
The clothesline wound from its figure-8
and around Rozzy
who squealed "More! More! I can wriggle out."
So Frances ran it one more time
and Margaret gave it an extra tug
and that's when Rozzy's weight fell on that half-leg.
For weeks I went around saying "It's not my fault. It's not my fault.
"The only thing I did was not yell stop."
The baby in the mirror gurgled and smiled.
The baby outside the mirror giggled and cooed.
I wondered whether they knew each other.
I wondered whether they liked each other.
I hoped they weren't falling in love with each other.
And what did he think of this other mother?
Which one did he like better?
Which one did he want holdiing which him?
Did he miss the other after one had walked away?
Did he think it perfectly resonable, one mother being in two places?
Did he know it was two places?
Had he known all along, that every object consists of two equal and
opposite
parts?
We always say THE mirror.
Never A mirror.
We know they're all the same.
We know they're co-planar
as one as windows on a single wall.
But the babies smiled and laughed.
They giggled and goggled.
It was as exciting as a trip
to the movies or the zoo.
Except, one day I took him there and they DIDN'T smile and coo.
Didn't cry or tremble either.
Just sort of puckered and smirked
then sported that look
and turned the other way.
The New York Times says there are very few sixty-year-old left-handed
people.
Yes, lefties, it claims, have a lower life-expectancy.
That neurological deviation
will be the death of them.
And I sit here and reassure myself:
There are old nail-biters.
Old stutterers.
Old tooth-pokers.
Old perfecters-of-childhood.
There are old Masters of the Long Proof.
And old women with post-partum fetishes.
These abnormalities have only been the life of me.
They will not be the death of me.
Or at least not such a sad
and early death.
--Marion Cohen