Son in August by Catherine Barnett

Son in August

 

Dignity, I said to myself

as he carried his last things into the dorm.

It was not a long goodbye,

 

nothing sad in it,

all I had to do was turn

and head up the hill.

 

All I had to do was balance

on two feet that seemed to belong

to a marionette who had no idea

 

what came next or who governed the strings.

There’s no emergency, I told her,

just get back to your car,

 

that’s it, that’s all that’s required.

I didn’t mind accompanying her,

I myself had nowhere to go.

 

She drove east then farther east

under a river through a tunnel

until she found herself back at home,

 

with a purpose.

And the purpose was?

To recognize the green awning.

 

To find a key in a pocket.

To fit that key in the lock,

take off her shoes, drop them on the floor

 

with others left there like old coins

from a place she must have visited.

Worth something but what.

 

There were no clues in the medicine cabinet,

none in the cupboard, none in the freezer

where she found old licorice and Bit-O-Honey

 

shoved next to a ziplock of bluish breast milk,

all of it frozen solid over nineteen years

into some work of art, a sculpture,

 

an archaic something of something.

She looked at my hands reaching into the freezer.

Or I looked at hers.

 

They were strong, worn, spackled with age

as they removed the milk-ice

stashed like weed far in the back.

 

Do they even make this stuff anymore?

What’s it good for?

What was it ever good for?

 

Repurposed, she thought,

isn’t that the word the kids keep saying

these days? Hey sweetie,

 

she called to the unoccupied room,

hey love. It was so hot the air

from the freezer turned to steam

 

and she took the ice into her own hands,

held it, held it gently against the back

of my warm animal neck

 

until something began to melt and I was alone.