The Day My Sister-in-Law Dies
I don’t recognize myself
in the rosy sunset, nor in the sliver of half-
moon dissolving like a wafer
on the tongue of twilight. I recognize
myself in the peeling bark
of the Sycamore, each layer shredded
over the last. I don’t recognize
myself in the perfect cherries I brought home
earlier from the grocery store
and ate in one sitting on the back deck
under my new, yellow-striped parasol
while listening to gossiping geese and the soft
clatter of water, or in the fountain spreading
swan-wide wings. Instead,
I recognize myself in the haunted cry
of a half-squished tree peeper dying slowly
on hot cement right in front
of my friend Cindy’s house. I hear it
as I cross the street to take an evening dip
in her pool. I don’t recognize
myself in daylight but feel instantly at home
in twilight. I don’t recognize
myself in the smooth pool water parting
gently to hold me, then mending
in my wake. But I recognize
myself in the inflamed meteors
of pain shooting through my left shoulder,
which makes me think that however beautiful
the universe seems from afar—
the falling stars shivering
in the firmament, meteors blazing trails
and leaking light—up close
everything is violent, wherever
you look: stars cut from steel and hammered
into shape, the moon nailed
to the black velvet wall of space. Coordinates
of time and memory intersect
at angles that necessitate collision.
There are so many ways
to leave behind a body. I imagine
it’s like waking up from dream
or like falling asleep. Or like traveling,
turning your back on all the places
where you are known. Or maybe it’s simply
like peeling off your clothes
before a bath or a skinny-dip on a cool
summer night with no-
one there, only rough-cut stars
and a moon with an indifferent face.
A translation from known
into unknown. I wonder how something
can become nothing? The scream
of a husband waking up next to his dead
wife is the first unbearable sound
of an epilogue: unfixable,
hollow. And time drives off like the car
that flattened the tree peeper,
some guts and blood worn into
shallow grooves of a bald rubber tire.
Published in Conestoga Zen Anthology from Conestoga Zen Press, edited and compiled by Rustin Larson, 2021