Interrupted

The potholes are in different places on my old commute home.

Places I once swerved to miss now ride smoothly and when my tire doesn’t ride the edge of the dip, I feel uncomfortable.

I pass the ghosts of me in old firehalls turned steakhouses turned tanning salons. Now I take trains on my own and I share what I know. In a public bathroom, an older woman tells me I’m on to something. I walk in a turtleneck at ninety degrees across cities to spend money at indie bookstores on stories I won’t read for a few weeks. They collect dust on my nightstand. I can still feel the sweat.

I hold on tightly at barricade with neon green foam in my ears, I sing what words I know but mostly feel the bass guitar in my ribs. I lose my voice singing on the car ride home. I think about how much my feet hurt, and I count the days until I’ll get to do it again.

I wear old hiking shoes new to me up the side of mountains and valleys covered and wildflowers and trees. I’m out of breath but my eyes are wide, left right left. Left right left.

I felt more alive when I didn’t know I was dying.

If I call my bruises purple galaxies, will the depiction of my grief be pretty enough for you?

Am I wrong to wish for the rose of my cheeks to distract you from the way I’m sweating through my clothes?

My heart, at rest, beats one hundred thirty times a minute. I have three different IVs. I refuse to pee in a bedside commode. Men in the rooms around me are on ventilators.

When my body starts to rigor, I’m grateful no one acknowledges my tears. They ask me what I know about sepsis and blood sugars.

I’ve lost track of what are pores and what are needle holes. There’s a constellation of yellows and reds on a two inch perimeter from my belly button. My cat litter containers recycle as sharps bins

My fingertips are bruised.

I feel the impulse for a July ice cream or a morning latte and I balance them against a meal plan for the day. They usually lose. I count the lancets in my purse.

I count the carbs in my ketchup.

The weather is perfect and it feels like a betrayal. I am not cleared for hiking shoes and mountain views. My stairs are my own Cascade and I pause at the top to catch my breath. I add a tower of dumbbells to my Amazon cart while I’m sitting on my porch. My friends pass a joint back and forth there later that evening and order Chinese food. I don’t get anything.

I weigh my college weight with my jeans on before I see the doctor. On Tik Tok, I watch a wife of 20 years zip so seamlessly into her old wedding dress and her husband cries. A few years from now, I will float in mine. I can see the tailored straps falling off my shoulders.

I’m not ready for the undertone of another woman’s “You look great!” when I feel like I’m wasting away. I will hate myself when I tell her thanks.

I admit to the nurse I cried over an Oreo and she asked me what the worst thing that could happen if I ate them.

“My sugar will spike,” but that’s not quite the way I want to say it.

She gives me a grocery list and I thank her. I start to hope the prognosis is worse so the prologue can clear it wasn’t my fault.

None of it was my fault.

None of it was my fault.

Please tell me none of it was my fault.

I sit at home wondering if they’ve filled anymore old potholes. I check my e-mail out of habit. I wore these clothes yesterday. I ate this breakfast yesterday. I wish I was bloated so I could feel like myself.

I resent smooth roads.