Let Us Flee the Nursing Home
She laughs as I sneak us out the side exit, [fleeing]
the bedlam of beds toward the pocket park,
toward fall’s skeletal leaves [fleeing] the trees,
clouds crumpled against the horizon.
So this is the taste of flight I think; I smell it on my breath.
Knowing no matter how far we go,
my sister will never [flee] the growing profusion
of absences, darkness of silence; and yet
for the first time in months, from the graveyard
of her mouth springs—bush and rabbit and growling dog.
She turns, (o, the startling clarity of her eyes),
as if she sees I, too, am [fleeing]
losses flocked here all along.
We follow the path until there is no path
before I draw her back, my hand
cupped in the warmth of her hand, toward the world
of blankets and blankness all too aware of what it is
we both are [fleeing], have [fled], will [flee].
Alaska Quarterly Review
Summer, 2019
