Behind Again, Poem 11

Machines – Explanation #3

When I asked, an aunt said:
“Cancer is like a broken machine
in permanent ‘ON’
that won’t stop making products,
like toys or hard candies,
until the whole factory is full.
Except these toys drown the workers.”

I know broken machines.
In 3rd grade,
Katie Schiffler, the girl with milk glass skin,
hair so dark it turned blue in gym lights,
who was in and out of school the whole year,
told me she loved me.
After her third hospital stay,
when our whole class sent her a card,
signed in the uneven cursives of growing hands,
I was absent so I sent my own card
which she took as love, which she kept safe,
my name heart circled
in her Trapper Keeper pencil pocket.

But that day in between swings,
when she gave me the note
she’d scribbled in bed,
a sick marionette with IV strings,
I told those caterpillar eyes,
we wouldn’t be 2-gether 4-ever.
She cried herself so dry,
they carried her to the nurse.

All next day, I slunked low.
Every girl in class gave me the death look.
It hurt to hear her sniff, a ragged sigh.
Her bruise colored hair draped and moveless,
she never looked my way, even up.
We were released for lunch.
I, sullen, watched her drag across the cafeteria.
Her next step is a dream I can’t stop playing.

Katie, glass Katie,
pitched forward like tripped,
her tray upended, contents moon bounced,
milk spray and peas,
her head snaps back, hair ravens up,
her face sleeping, eyes shut
and mouth exhaling every last air.
Hands that don’t try to stop her,
body runs to the floor like an embrace,
and she slides to a still.

After the ambulance, the gurney,
the distraught masses were calmed,
our teacher in a sea brimmed voice
told us how sick Katie’d been,
the year she’d waited for a new heart
and how this one finally broke.

In my dream, the whole third grade
looks back at me.