And You Weren't There (ROUND 2)
Let's workshop this poem about the complex emotions and tough decisions that a young writer, obsessively dedicated to his craft, faces after witnessing an accident potentially involving a loved one.
And You Weren’t There Walking back from class, the usual trek, I saw an ambulance in a crowd ahead. Closer, angled better to see through the thick—it was you, no, lying alongside a truck. EMTs were lifting you onto a stretcher— of all things, the baby carrier latched around your body, empty. Why it? The guy in the truck had his face deep in his hands. Students prayed in a circle of instinct, beseeching the blue sky, as if they knew you. Was it this, them, that kept me walking to the library, where I was headed, where I always am, where I escape from you, both of you, to work? Was I hoping to avoid embarrassment? What would be the embarrassment? Would it be shouldering through despite demands that people stay back, and shoving aside the prayers, only to find out— in their gaze—it wasn’t you? Or would it be my finding out it really was you, and having my finding out be witnessed in public, and being expected to do something—cry, scream, throw haymakers at nothing, at the driver who ran you down— in public, and risk being seen as not behaving the right way by the public? Was I in denial, thrashing truth? But the carrier— could our son have fit anymore? As I fought the to-the-scene tide I tried calling you. I called again during my study, the two hours I had before you were to pick me up (then our boy at school). Thinking, I guess, if it really had been you, someone would have called the number that called twice—I lost myself in work, writing as if just another day. Needing to refine the line and pee, I came a few minutes late, as always. And you weren’t there. I pulled from my pocket the poem I just had to fiddle with in disregard to you, as if the confession in ink— lit by the lamp of a cricket night— would bewitch my worry untrue. “Flapjack dawns after he laid an egg did not last. The burner would fire and all had to go like gnat bananas, their feelings ripples of nuisance met with mere smoothing words blatantly born of his nesting craze.” I read it. And you weren’t there.
