Vista: red way out

Hands

My baby sister was born with permanently closed hands––like seashells 

none of us dared to admit she may have been disabled. Instead. My mother tried to fix her

stuffing her hands with tissue. But she just couldn’t open up. Instead, she cried herself to sleep every night. We learned to drown out her tears so we could sleep. She died soon after. 

We should have known that someone born with permanent fists would end up fighting for her life. She actually threw up and drowned in it. None of us woke up to save her. The only thing we got to teach her was how to drown her tears so we could sleep. 

I spent my childhood bathing. Holding my head under water either trying to drown out my sorrows or just trying to relate. You say its suicidal I say blood is thicker than water torture 

I learned to stop. I threw the baby out with the bath water.

We spent the next two weeks. With half the house crying the other half trying to wake up from the nightmare. How could we? We learned to drown out the crying so we could sleep. If only we had listened to her hands pressed our ears against those seashells, we may have heard the ocean that was coming for her. our family began to sink. We were all drowning. There were never enough lifeboats in this dead sea. Waves of emotion gave us all bodies of water. Tears only adding insult to sea sickness. 

Everyone but my mother cried. At the funeral I watched her becoming her daughter’s hands holding tissue refusing to open up. 

We began to pile all her stuff away. It’s not that we couldn’t stand the sight of them. It’s just everything we touched made us cry like we were the ones with no tomorrow. My mother kept washing her clothes. It’s not that she was crazy enough to thing the baby would grow into them. She just knew that she was this close to washing out the smell of tear gas in them. 

Years of questioning a god who doesn’t respond anyway will lead a family to some very shallow places searching for answers. Like what is god on a long walk home? When you try to convince yourself to pray to the streetlights that seem to hang above like omens? Always high enough for people to obey them. What if god is just a metaphor for if you hand something high enough people will obey it? Does he ever take off his halo to scratch his head?

What if god was just like us? We pray at night, don’t we? What if he learned to drown out our tears so he could sleep? We killed his son. Did he ever get to cry about it? What if my sister was just god’s agent sent to earth to pick something up for him? What if when she got to heaven, he opened up her hands, pulled out the tissue and finally wiped his tears with them?

Chalk Dust (annotated found poem)
Still

Adjective: Not moving or making a sound.

Example; My sister pushes the baby out still.

Noun: Deep silence or calm.

Example: Every time my sister tells the story it births a stillness

she can’t break her silence without her water breaking again.

Noun: An ordinary static photograph as opposed to motion picture.

Example: She could not keep the still child, she could not keep the stills of the still child.

Adverb: Up to and including the present or the time mentioned; 

              even now (or then) as formerly.

Example:  My mother tells my sister “you will not 

                 become a mother while still in my house”. 

                 She came home with no baby 

     my mother changed the locks still.

_____

Exorcism

the first hour my sister is a pinned cotton doll. dancing at the joints
the sheets muddied beneath her. the doctor whispers into her belly

demon be still.

she’s strapped to the hospital bed and screaming. the attending 

fashions his stethoscope into a crucifix. she speaks 

a tongue riddled with bite marks.

the second hour my sister is arched and convulsing.
the spirit inside of her must not stay. she echoes every word 

and moves the furniture

my mother, while washing her hands at the only river that runs 

through our apartment, decides

god didn't make this baby.

the demon is crowning. the doctor rubs holy ash on its forehead
in the shape of crow’s feet. the baby spits an egg onto the floor.

it shatters into black feathers

my sister’s screaming bends into laughter. the nurse swallows the hail mary 

under her breath. all the water in my apartment runs the color 

of burning copper

my mother doesn't leave the bathtub. this means her prayers 

have been answered. the doctors did all they could.
the demon was born.

still.

_____

Preparations
is it absurd to place the pacifier in her daughter’s mouth still?
i still wanted to put the things she bought to use

will the baby monitor still work from so far away?

my sister should have brought that baby home

still, it wasn’t moving or making a sound
my mother wouldn't have been disturbed

there was an ordinary static. when she called.
and told me. her daughter. was born. 

(adjective) still

i became (noun) still

my mother (adverb) still.

Planters

I am not sure my parents are happy. I haven’t gotten around to asking. My father is a shovel 

sharpened by flood waters and funeral songs, my mother’s tongue is autopsy sharp. She has a habit of bad mouthing anyone who is gone too long. Which is to say she throws dirt on them. All of my grandparents were dead before I got a chance to meet them and that is the only story ever told of them, I learned that life is burying all of the things you have no use for.

 My parents share a bed the way that maggots and vultures share a meal. But when my sister died, they were the skeletons from their closets, the pretty bones made them look like family. Death was the only outfit they had in common it was a road map that led them to a dirt patched called together. Sometimes you have to sift beneath the ashes to find shiny things. Sometimes the best way to find a needle in a haystack it to burn the haystack down. 

My mother has always been a horrible planter. Nothing she put in the soil ever grew. Growing up she surrounded her children with flowers. From bedsheets to pillowcases––wallpaper. She buried an entire onion once, it’s how she mourned. But see children we mourn in wishful thinking. Like––god doesn’t kill babies does he? He’s just teasing he’s not going to keep her dead forever. We learned that dandelions granted wishes, so we collected them. Blowing them like the birthday candles my sister never lived long enough to whisper wishes into. Prayer is just a candle that you whisper wisher into. A melting wax figure that burned our childhood down like a haystack and of course god sifted through the ashes for our little needle, the only stitch that made us close like family and he always reaps what he sews with. 

An open casket is no place for a childhood. At the funeral we didn't believe it was her until we saw the burn mark on her cheek. We learned to identify people by their scars learned that something's follow you into death and that death follows you into some things.

It was all a lie. 

Cause we buried her. 

Watered her grave with our tears. 

And nothing grew from it. That’s why my mother buried onions who else would. Other than someone desperately trying to avoid their tears. 

Maybe god takes the prettiest flowers for his garden. There were hoards or people who brought my mother roses Almost to say here, we heard you have been collecting dead things 

My mother goes home to forgive God. Her children go home to forget him. 

My father sees his family morphing into a funeral bouquet grows a scarecrow posture. 

Won't let anyone near his garden. My mother surrounds her children with flowers 

Can't tell if she's feeling nostalgic or hiding us from God.