No Longer Other

When I was little,
death did not happen to me.
It was on the list of things
that happened to other people I did not know well:
divorce, cancer, fire, torture, and virgin births.
Death happened to distant great uncles
and someone else's fish.
Death was like the Morgans' backyard pool:
they had one, and we did not.
Now death lives in that space
where they removed my uterus and sewed me shut,
forever cutting off the path
from inside me to outside me.
It presses itself over the scar I will never see,
a cat that lies on the newspaper,
drawn to it by attention.

Comments

[gautami tripathy]

"Now death lives in that space
where they removed my uterus and sewed me shut,
forever cutting off the path
from inside me to outside me."

Poignant lines.

[Regina Clare Jane]

Wow, this was so powerful, Schmutzie. We do tend to think like this, don't we, that death is for all those other people... then when it happens to you... wow.
Bravo...

[tumblewords]

The first line lives inside us all, I think and the weaving through the other years leaves a strong mark. The way you wove the friends' pool into your lack of one was very smooth.

[...deb]

The movement from child to adult understanding--so quickly and effortlessly--is breathless. Wrenching.

[Crafty Green Poet]

it's a painful point in personal development when death becomes real, excellent poem