where memory stops
doesn’t mean that’s where
memory ends
I should put it in a poem—
what I don’t know I don’t know—
put it underneath
what I know
I don’t know
events careen past the fade to black
playing chicken with a V8 Ford
rifles and a typewriter packed
in the trunk
Will you hold this poem for me?
The safety latch’s on
Childhood adversity shortens the lengths of cells’ telomeres, which results in reduced life spans and increased aging and illness.
Cloned animals have this very same issue in which their telomeres are shorter and thus they have a shorter lifespan than the original organism from which they derive their DNA.
Telomeres cap chromosomes. They keep DNA from unwinding and fraying, like the plastic tip of a shoelace. These telomeres naturally shorten with each division of cells until the cells can no longer divide, i.e. live.
Trauma turns you into a clone of yourself where your inherited DNA is more prone to faults and risks. Like a clone, traumatized you has shortened telomeres and defective genetic wiring.
The original you with all your DNA intact escapes into the ether while the traumatized clone version of you degenerates, genetic materials spooling out from chromosomes with frayed telomeres and onto the party’s checker-board floor for all your friends and colleagues to see.
When trauma-clone you heads into the kitchen to fetch another drink, original you slips out the back door to share a smoke with the party’s host, leaving cloned you to live with the kinetic energy and material decay of what actually happened to you. You’ve got to work it all out on the makeshift living room dance floor with sweat and embarrassment as seven and half minutes of LCD Soundsystem’s “All My Friends” play.
Please hand me that screw-top wine
If I write in a way that compels you
will you offer me safety and resources
a room to shelter in
I can’t live inside the shuttered
room of a poem
my sister couldn’t live inside music
though we really tried to
Maybe if I switch genres…
I could squat inside a sit-com pilot
A ratty grey couch in a ground-floor apartment. Lyric “I”, brunette 32, types on a rose gold MacBook. Lyric “I”’s sister, almost identical brunette 38, either a ghost or pale as a ghost, stumbles into the living room swaddled in scarves.
Lyric “I”: Hello my sister, who is dead or dying.
Lyric “I”’s sister: I made egg salad sandwiches for everyone even though I’m concussed and want to die.
Audience chortles a chorus of She’ll be okay! with a few inappropriate hoots and hollers.
Fade to Word-document white.
I spoke so plainly about her desire to die
I used the term “active suicide ideation”
when conversing with nurses and doctors
in the many hospitals I accompanied her to
I alerted our parents, called our uncle
talked to her friends and mine
I gave up lyric
I gave up metaphor
I gave up stepping outside of time
I gave up language in the service of expression
I committed to linear timelines, urgent symptoms and real events
still no one could pick up what I was putting down
I didn’t speak as plainly
about my desire to die
so I understand
how no one got that
Yeah, put it in a poem
that’ll make it okay
it did
not make it okay
My sister had been praying to angels
to help her kill herself when I called.
She said the angels wouldn’t come
and so she didn’t kill herself that night.
9 days later
The day before she died, I texted my sister Jane and John are angels!
She replied So are we.
After, Rebecca texted I guess the angels gave her the go ahead
Living isn’t supposed to feel
deathlike and heavy with dread
I can tell you don’t care for my new death-eaten lyric
It’s okay
But you know the saying:
what you can’t remember wears you
out like old running shoes
what you do remember
is unspeakable
Lyric “I”: What would help you feel safe?
Lyric “I”’s sister: I’ve never felt safe a day in my life.
Fade to night-mode black.
Put it all in a poem
To safeguard
Though that doesn’t feel right
The self-help books are a chorus
of good news: neuroplasticity
means you can heal. The brain
can re-wire to seek safety
instead of threat
No one dares mention
how living with a father
who tries to kill you
eventually kills you
Or how you
eventually kill you
The self-annihilating clone
is merely following orders
Hips creaks like staircases
What you can’t remember
wears you like a scarf
or a moth
I wear whatever’s
beyond the horizon