Amanda Moore was one of the readers at Britt Marie’s last Sunday. This was my favorite of the poems she read:
The Broken Leg
Eventually it comes between us:
not the plaster barricade
between every tender moment we might have,
but the dependence.
After the flurry of surgeons
and worry of permanent damage
there is the carrying of urine
the changing of bandages
the creak of crutches and incessant talk of scabs.
Like a shabby patch of grass
I am stretched out beneath him, trampled
and benignly offering servitude:
not the meal or the pillow, the TV or the bed or the Vicodin,
but the nagging truth behind it all.
In short, it’s unromantic,
this child in the shape of my husband,
this outstretched hand, rumpled head and hungry mouth.
And the bright side? Well, talk to me another day.
For now it is logistics and medicine,
car pools and take-out pizza, not laughing
while he climbs the stairs on his butt.
And it’s the weight of one house,
its dishes and litter and dust on my shoulders.
Continue reading “A poem from last Sunday”