How Are You Still Here

I haven’t written poetry since college for two reasons, both of them stupid. 1. I associate it with being a teenager and the general shame and embarrassment associated with that era, and 2. In college, I asked my poetry professor if he thought I was good and there was a pregnant pause before he gave his very qualified response that let me know in fact no, I will not be making a professional go of poetry. Those two things combined with finding success in other creative pursuits led me to ditch poems even though I never stopped liking to read them.

Anyway, that’s my shame talking in the form of a preamble to share one I wrote the other day that’s been floating in my head for a while. Here it is:

How are you still here

It’s been years and you’re still getting mail here
Yesterday ironically it was a letter from the life insurance company
Asking if you wanted to up the stakes 
Go from a million to more for just a little a month
And another one from a health care corporation
Saying there was a data breach and your personal information had been compromised.
I wonder if maybe you’ve been given a second life
As a credit card, racking up charges at Benihanas or gas stations
Maybe making a jailbreak to Ipanema  

I’m still filling garbage bags with your longevity oils
And face masks that you stashed in every corner of our house
Like you were planning a self-care hibernation bender.
There was a prescription for ibuprofen that was prescribed to you in 2016
That I threw away because it was basically just store strength and it had expired.
And there’s a drawer of tampons that seems to self-replenish. Every
Other month I take a handful of them to the garbage but it’s never-ending. 

This morning I found a candle a witch made you to heal you
I had an inner debate to light it and I haven’t yet. 
You aren’t sick anymore
So maybe its magic is gone, too.

When we met I had a small apartment that I abandoned fully furnished. 
I’ve hired multiple moving trucks, filled them to the absolute brim, 
Slapped the driver on the back and told him Thank God for you
And watched your stuff leave
Hoping that the burden leaves too.

Then I open a drawer and there’s the pregnancy test 
That told us we were going to have a daughter
I didn’t know you kept that.
And nearby buried under more essential oils,
there’s a key to the room we slept in on our wedding night.

More jewelry
More spritzes 
A little girl’s voice in the next room
Proud that she just made her bed.