“I don’t know where I saw more dead bodies,
Serving in the Coast Guard,
or growing up in Florida.”
“—But I don’t think it was that traumatic,”
she says.
“The hurricane was more like an adventure,”
she says,
Fingers tracing the shape of eight neighbors braced in a bathroom,
hands against an about-to-fail wall
(flexing like a tiled lung).
“Some people had it worse,”
she says,
Re-watching a homeless man hit by a school bus, bleeding out
while his friend complains “you crushed our hamburger!”
“I was too busy being mad to be messed up,”
she says,
Re-shouting at him “Get off!!”
and that she’d slit his throat
if he ever snuck in to touch her
or any girl in their rack again.
“Maybe I deserved it,”
she says,
Pointing at a scar where her second
husband threw a knife,
Holding out hands like there is still
a loaded gun he placed there—
daring her to shoot herself
or him.
“Do it.”
“Maybe I’m just crazy, damaged now—
a piece of shit.”
She says,
balling up on the floor shaking-crying
because I turned out the lights
without putting her in bed,
or fell asleep in the middle of telling her
over and over
“I am not leaving”
and yes,
“I still love you, I still love you.”
“I hate that I’m doing this to you.”
She says,
looking at me with
blue sparkling eyes,
while the sky turns quiet—
looking past me,
down debris-filled streets...
her bruised palms
and dented walls,
lumped forehead
and clumps of hair...
She doesn't know
if now
is the eye of the storm or a safe, long rest
until the next one.
Even though
She is the storm.
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