Opiates in Reverse
For Mike Torres
Before his sister claimed his body
from a Florida prison, my mother’s
ashes already cold in the ground,
before hepatitis, before the shrikes
of abuse picked him apart piece
by piece, before sentencing for
armed robbery of a Dollar General—
fake bomb, third strike—before
laundry room became opium den—
lighter, foil, and spoon stashed
next to the fabric softener, before
every tooth fell from his head, gums
gone slack with abandon, before his
grandson learned how to call in
overdoses, before we had to buy
my mother’s jewelry back from hock
because she wouldn’t file a police
report, before all the lies, before
diverticulitis and surgeries, fentanyl
to treat pain despite twenty years
off the needle, before all that,
he would warm the kittens’ food
and mewl back as they followed
him from microwave to bowl.
He would pick me up from JFK,
whistling through Queens traffic,
safe as houses. He would carry
his grandson through the zoo
on his shoulders to better see
the lions in their mean enclosures.
Belongings
Everyone mourns their own way, my sister perseverated, pacing, unable
to alight on her own plan. I went with classical, weeping in the shower
of an AirBnB in Cocoa. I soaked only once in the hot tub, choosing
a bit of business as usual in a Florida fashion. I suppose the palms
didn’t slant differently, and the only ripples in estuaries were churned
by everyday gators. In the condo next door renters threw a blowout,
their enormous speaker throbbing all night against the adjoining wall.
As if I could knock and say can’t you see we are grieving? As if they would
turn it down to pour one out for who we lost. Back at her house,
because everyone mourns their own way, we parked a dumpster
in the driveway. The hands of the pink man who delivered it
were cracked, disintegrating. Skin cancer, he shrugged, picking at
a festering hole on the webbing between thumb and forefinger.
My sister wandered between piles in the garage, picking up
and putting down, unable to start. I wanted to sift carefully, afraid
to miss trinket boxes storing my childhood against their torn
felt linings. My brother only wanted one album of ancestors, no
photos of our mother pasted to those sticky, black pages. No patience
for what she may have meant to her daughters, or the way things
can mean, so he loaded box after moldering box into the big,
green dumpster without looking at what they held, his blue eyes,
inherited from her, crystal clear with intention.
Sonia Greenfield (she/they) is the author of four poetry collections: All Possible Histories (Riot in Your Throat), Helen of Troy is High AF (Harbor Editions), Letdown (White Pine Press), and Boy with a Halo at the Farmer's Market (Codhill Press). Her poetry and creative non-fiction have appeared in the 2018 and 2010 Best American Poetry, diode, Southern Review, Willow Springs, and elsewhere. She lives with her family in Minneapolis, where she teaches at Normandale College, edits the Rise Up Review, and advocates for neurodiversity and the decentering of the cis/het white hegemony—more at soniagreenfield.com