Don't read this 2

My breath is a treadle sewing machine behind my collarbone. A creaking bellows. An angry alligator. I am trying to make a poem before I sleep, but I cannot think. I keep falling into old song lyrics. Regularly, my diaphram spits out a cough and I must fight to control it, to keep from barking and choking. Even Eli has taken refuge under the bed.

Lots of things hurt in the night. Things that are more bearable by daylight.

It has been almost a year since I have seen Maddix and Lily. They have been surgically removed. I am still stunned. I can probably count on the fingers of one hand the times that I will ever see them again. Lily's birthday is coming again. You have stolen a whole year of her from me. Why did you do this, Michael?

I press my fingers into my cheeks. I take slow breaths. Shallow. Do not disturb the alligator.

I think of Laurie in her chicken dress that Easter Sunday, with her curly head, standing in the tulips on my parent's lawn. She was so beautiful and I thought that everything was going to be okay. I thought that marrying David would turn him into Arthur. I thought that we would be Happy Family and I would be June Cleaver in a Marianne Faithful kind of way. I thought I was doing the right thing. I didn't know anything. And I didn't do a very good job at any of it.

Eli has come out and climbed on the chair beside me.

I want to be another person and I am surprised because I always thought I liked me.What am I going to do now?

I locked my doors again tonight.