Cate Root is a writer in New Orleans.
When we can’t touch
I see your hand at your side. I ask
Is your back bothering you? You don’t
Know, or maybe yes it is but you don’t
Want to know, you say. I want to
Explain I noticed because of all that
I have watched you before. I keep trying to get
Your body to relax the way it would if only I
We could encircle I want to tell you I’m not
Afraid of you but then you would have to tell me
That it would be worse for you because after
The embrace would knock the anxiety
Rappapowpop I told you about my breakthrough
The point of food is to take me from hungry to not
And I was afraid to let myself be hungry. Was
But I got better. Right now I tell you my story
And you swallow it. You’re afraid to be hungry
Too, you told me. What I mangled saying was I
Only asked if you were in pain when I saw the second
Sign of it. We struggled to part. I smiled as I left.
We were both hungry and I told you I would
Make you a plate, tried to tease with a list
Of ingredients but you are used
To refusing me.
Sometimes
I can’t believe that I have already
been to my mother’s funeral
the black dress was real, when my friends
said I looked nice I joked it was wicked witch chic
I was there in a room with her ashes (crushed
up bones) and we cried and ate Italian food
my nephews pretended to be waiters and I asked
the five year old if he could pronounce Sauvignon blanc
he nodded and rushed off, working for tips
I drove my mom’s car—full of
poinsettias—brought into church and then home
she isn’t in the ground and she isn’t here and
I said goodbye so many times, for weeks and months
death lives inside me, I scoop it out sometimes
by the side of the road, I leave piles of dirt next to the trash can
I am my own refuse, the discards, the leftovers of who I loved
I see the pictures and you could sleep on the bags
under my eyes but otherwise I don’t look too miserable
how did I manage to laugh
I didn’t realize yet it wasn’t an ending
my uncles singing into the night
all of us swaying in someone else’s arms