#22
      The "THERAPIST" Issue

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Anna Lowe Weber

After Watching the HBO Special, Olive Kitteridge

 

You tell me that if you ever have a stroke

I’m going to have to just kill you in your sleep—

 

smother me with a pillow or something.

Make Charlie do it.  Our son, five months old—

 

smiling, always smiling.  You’re really

thinking ahead.  But I can tell you right now

 

that he won’t be strong enough to do the deed,

if the time comes.  Better to rely on our daughter—

 

four years old and a hellion most of the time, all spite

and fury, prone to Polly Pocket-sized fits of rage. 

 

She’s your best bet.  The other night, she told me simply,

I don’t love you.  She sounded so sure of it that I had to

 

respect her certitude, the way she flung it right

at the bullseye of my heart like the only sober player

 

in a drunken game of darts.  And the baby

just keeps smiling, smiling, smiling—

 

life is so easy as a happy white male, I say. 

I can never tell if I’m joking or not.  Like when

 

you tell me I’m going to have to put an end

to your life and I say Do I have to wait for the stroke? 

 

But hey, that’s a joke.  We’re all kidders around here. 

Laughing on the front porch late into the evening

 

while the mosquitos suck big fat welts

on our arms and legs, our blood so sweet

they can’t resist.  They come around for it

night after night, teenagers drunk with lust for

 

what we’re handing out simply by being there, sitting,

watching the four-year old as she tries and fails

 

to catch fireflies, a tantrum imminent.  Half a sweating bottle

of chardonnay left to kill, glistening like urine

 

in the moonlight.  Eat up, boys.  We’re not going

inside.  We’re not going anywhere.

 

Apiary

A swarm of bees makes its home

in your mother’s soul, regurgitates

flowery nectar until her walls drip.

It is in this way that your mother

is a nest.  See how the bees

caress the entrance, how they smooth

it again and again. No wings beat

like your mother’s soul.

            But soon the keeper comes. 

Always, always to collect.   He will

smoke it out, scrape the cavity.  Return

home with a lion’s share, more honey

than he could ever finish

in his lifetime.

 

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