THE FINAL VOICEMAILS 1 I was told my proximity to the toxin would promote changes to my thinking, speech, and behavior. My first thought was, of course, for the child, the little girl, but graceful, silent figures in white suits flitted to her and led her away by the shoulders, like two friends taking a turtle from a pond. My second thought was about pain, the last thing visible without our manners-- Or could there be an invisible peace once the peace of the senses departs? 2 I'm glad she's gone, and not just for her sake: without her I feel somehow better equipped to be what I am becoming-- which is, I suppose, preoccupied. Nobody ever tells you how busy loneliness is-- Every night I cover the windows in soap, and through the night I dart soap over any lick of light that makes its way to my desk or bed or the floor. At first it was fear--an understanding that the light was death, was the toxin, though really the toxin was invisible, they said, and came from the water. But work blesses fear like a holy man blessing a burlapped sinner, saying It is for you and Because of you , and in time the working mind knows only itself, which is loneliness. 3 Dim sight now, and each twitch flows into a deep, old choreography. Maybe a week ago, my arm banged the faucet, and I danced in the middle of the bathroom-- the entire final dance from the tango class we took at the gym in New Haven, with the air as you. I wasn't picturing you, I didn't smell your damp hair-- don't imagine that I'm living in memory. Whatever I am, it is good at cutting meat. The trick is: That's blood. If you focus your fingers on feeling it, you cannot mistake yourself for the animal, who cannot feel; you never cut yourself if you give your life to the blood you shed. 4 I know you've been waiting for disintegration, but it just doesn't seem to be coming. I need to go out to gather some berries. No more meat: I've adopted your diet. All this time, I thought my shedding would expose a core, I thought I would at least know myself, but these mild passions, all surface, keep erupting now like acne--or like those berries on a bush. Don't ask me to name them-- I've never been that kind of guy. Red berries--sour, sticky. If you really want to know, come here, just try them. Red as earth, red as a dying berry, red as your lips, red as the last thing I saw and whatever next thing I will see. *** EARTHQUAKE COUNTRY BEFORE FINAL CHEMOTHERAPY For the first time tonight, as I put my wife to bed I didn't have to shove her off me. She turned away in her sleep. I wondered what was wrong with my chest. I felt it, and the collar bone spiked up, and where she'd rest her cheek were ribs. Who wants to cuddle a skeleton? My skeleton wandered from the house and out onto the street. He came, after much wandering, to the edge of a bay where a long bridge headed out-- the kind that hangs itself with steel and sways as if the wind could take away its weight. There were mountains in the distance-- triangles of cardboard-- or perhaps the mist was tricking his eyes. The instant the mist made him doubtful, it turned to rain. The rain covered everything. The holes in his face were so heavy he wondered if the water was thickening-- if he was leaching into them. He panicked. Perhaps he was gunked up with that disgusting paste, flesh, all over again. If I were alive I'd have told him I was nothing like what he was feeling-- that the rain felt more like the shell of a crab than the way I'd held him. That it felt more like him. But I wasn't alive-- I was the ghost in the bridge willing the cars to join me, telling them that death was not wind, was not weight, was not mist, and certainly not the mountains-- that it was the breaking apart, the replacement of who, when, how, and where with what. When my skeleton looked down he was corrupted in the femur by fracture, something swelling within. Out of him leaked pink moss. Water took it away. *** TUESDAY We haven't moved from this pier in a couple years. All we need to do to be happy is point out fish. Sure, we're just pointing at ripples, but we know they're fish because a long time ago we ate an oyster, and every time a fish sees another, you and me get fed again. Elizabeth, when you put your hands to the scales the senses lose weight and a new full that doesn't hurt me can last in my stomach. The bulk of the meat you thin into a braid of arrows, and the gills, the difficult scissors taken inside to breathe, they're just wide arrows. A kind that points-- like a hand tremoring because there's a past being pointed to that already understood the present. *** LEISURE-LOVING MAN SUFFERS UNTIMELY DEATH You ask why the dinner table has been so quiet. I've felt, for a month, like the table: holding strange things in my head when there are voices present. And when the voices die, a cool cloth and some sparkling spray. I'm on painkillers around the clock, and I fear it's always been just the pain talking to you. The last vision was of the pain leaving-- it looked just like me as it came out of my mouth, but it was holding a spatula. It was me if I had learned to cook. The pain drifted to the kitchen. He hitched himself to the oven, was a centaur completed by bread, great black loaves bursting from the oven, and then the vision vanished. I followed, and stood where he had stood. The knives rustled in the block, the pans clacked overhead. I'm sterile from chemo, and thought of that. Sure, I wish my imagination well, wherever it is. But now I have sleep to fill. Every night I dream I have a bucket and move clear water from a hole to a clear ocean. A robot's voice barks This is sleep. This is sleep. I'd drink the water, but I'm worried the next night I'd regret it. I might need every last drop. Nobody will tell me. Excerpted from The Final Voicemails: Poems by Max Ritvo All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
