April 8th

My father said to me, the universe is a snowglobe
without the glass.

When I was diagnosed, I thought
it must be more of a recursive
snowglobe within a snowglobe situation.

After the surgery
I was W.E. Hill's Young Girl - Old Woman illusion,
twenty years old and incontinent.
I had a spray bottle on the bathroom sink
to clean myself,
my new red circle of skin.
On the bed I lay on my side,
with pillows between my knees to let the stitches dry.
The ice packs between my thighs
started to smell
slightly rotten, like the fallow musk of a grandmother.

He said to me, I wish you wouldn't talk about it,
and I thought he couldn't handle
his daughter unable to give him grandchildren.

Until I saw his back pain
flare like a star giving out,
saw him confined
to bed for a month. Gave him my
leftover vicodin so he could
creep down the hall to the bathroom.

That's when I wanted to ask him
what was falling down in our respective snowglobes

but the mind can't hold all those snowglobes.
It's only meat on the bone of space,
a series of pulling tendons
so long they meet themselves at the end of themselves.