that was the year

that was the year when my brother got arrested and all of us were stunned in that kind of what? in the world? it's impossible! kind of stunned that stopped me fast yanked me down and took my breath away and made me whisper to my girlfriend that the only way that the word brother goes with the word jail is if he was visiting one to volunteer. shows how much I knew that year. the year that my daughter went away to college and all I could do was cry not sweet motherly tears but heaving sobs with my nose running and my eyes swollen red that embarrassed everyone around including me but I couldn't stop and carried on like that just like that for weeks even when I went to a couple's weekend with my husband to talk and I couldn't because all I could do was wail at the loss of my daughter. that year my mother died when there should never be a year when a mother dies six weeks after being diagnosed with something that had treatment protocols described by the doctor for me to tell her about so she could decide which one to choose and instead she died and I just wasn't ready to not have her in my life in my daughter's life and to figure out what to do with the hole in my heart which they had no treatment protocols for or even told me about so I could prepare for until there it was and it felt like it was the whole of me this hole where I used to have a whole heart and I stood there without my mother who always took care of things like that like family heart holes and I had to figure out what to do myself alone that year. that year I got fired from my profession can I get fired from my profession? which they think is just a job and I had never been fired before and where do they get those ridiculous euphemisms like downsizing and rightsizing when it's down alright I mean I was down but it's not right no matter what size they say it is without me and it wasn't a job it was my professed profession since I was three and I was so immobilized really unable to move that I had to go to a healer to get healed because I couldn't just couldn't move and I had a hole in my heart and it wasn't the kind of healing you have to chat about at a coffee klatch it was the kind that fills heart holes gets limbs moving and saves your life. that year that was the year.


This was posted in response to the prompt: Stream-of-Consciousness Writing by Victoria Slotto in Meeting the Bar: Critique and Craft over at the dVerse Poets Pub.