Breadcrumb #678

KOSCINA RENAUD-TATE

Mommy speaks to me every day
I look and stare
My head spins around in confusion
I move my lips
But nothing comes out 

She’d take me to the park
As I watch the kids play
I wonder if I could join
Muster up the courage to talk
But yet another failed attempt 

The kids try to play
They think I’m shy
A solitary play type of guy
Their words travel through my head
A jumbled up mix of alphabet soup
And yet again I’m stuck
Silence 

I can tell Mommy cares about me
On this nomadic journey, she left everything behind
She dealt with my aches and pains
Her hugs and kisses spoke volumes of love
And my response
Silence 

I guess Mommy got tired of this silence
As she slept in this expensive hotel suite
It crept up and haunted her at night
Money doesn’t cure all
It was a nightmare on Fifth Ave.
Something was eating at her
Silence 

She gave me a handful of candy
It wasn’t my favorite
No tangy taste or colorful wrappers
But Mommy seems to enjoy it
I’d do anything to make Mommy happy
My eyelids were weighed down
Guarding glossy eyes
Mommy hugs me tight
As she babbles in the background
Helpless and disabled
I say nothing
Silence 

Silent no longer
My presence is absent
These bouncy blond curls locked in a box
As 8 years replay in my mind
Silent no more
My voice is heard
This 7-letter word was the death of me
Silence 

[Anatomy of a Poem – Rest in Peace Jude Jordan
Autism is not the end]

• • •

Breadcrumb #677

MELISSA ST. PIERRE

Sometimes, it really is all about the dress. 

Other times, it’s about the shoes, the jewelry, the hair, the nails. 

When I was younger, I wore dresses all the time. That, in and of itself, isn’t strange. But what is? Wearing a knee(ish) length dress, with heels, in Michigan. In winter. In a snowstorm. Shivering through parking lots like I owned them.  Why? 

Just. Because. I. Could. 

Because sometimes, it’s about the dress. And that is all.

I have since revised that idea. 

Not that I don’t wear dresses, I do. And I love them just as much. But now, I love being comfortable, and seasonally appropriate, even more. 

Once I graduated from high school, I donated most of my prom and formal dresses to a local organization called Hope Closet. 

But I had one that I kept. 

I knew I’d probably never use it, and I knew then that I couldn’t fit into it. 

Saturday, April 27, 2002:

It is the date of my junior prom.

It was also the day after my birthday. 

Weeks before, my mom, her friend Lydia, and I had gone shopping for the perfect dress. I had an idea of what I wanted. I “shopped” online and found it. The dress. 

It was an Alfred Angelo. Pale pink. Bridal like skirted bottom. Princess waist. Sparkles on the skirt.

I wanted it perfect.

The two closest peas in my (then) pod had deserted me for dates I’m sure they have forgotten long ago. And for the first time since we had started navigating our way through high school, we were not getting ready for a dance together. 

I was shy back then and asking anyone to go with me took the kind of courage I wouldn’t have for years to come. But, I did it anyway.

“ The two closest peas in my (then) pod had deserted me for dates I’m sure they have forgotten long ago.”

I asked a boy I liked that was a year older than me. Clearly, he said no. This ended up not being a catastrophe.

I asked a boy I had once dated. I still liked him so much, but I hadn’t given him enough lead time. 

So, I was going to go:  alone.

This is why the dress needed to be perfect.

It wasn’t pink.

It is blue. It’s jewel blue satin and the bodice has small jewels that adorn its accents. 

And my mom picked it out. 

I had my hair done in a fancy updo style. Reflecting back, it should have had its own flight plan, zip code, something. It was big. But then, it was just right. 

My mom tied the corset back and once in the dress, I was ready. 

We went outside and even though it was freezing, we took photo after photo. It was brilliant!

I hugged my parents and got behind the wheel of my truck. I blew out a breath and cranked “Wish You Were Here” as loud as I could. That, and all of my favorite songs. 

On the drive there, I felt my stomach clench. I was nervous to walk in alone. What if I was early? What if everyone stared at me? What if….

But thirty minutes later, I was there. 

Blowing out another deep breath, I stuck my heeled feet out and stood, smoothing my perfect dress. 

One foot in front of the other, just like any other walk. Right?

As I approached the door, I saw my friend Sarah and her boyfriend. Thank goodness, I said silently. I could walk in behind them and no one would notice that I was alone. 

It worked. Kind of.

We veered off in different directions once through the main doors. 

  There I was. In my jewel blue dress, fancy hair, pretty nails. Alone. 

And yeah, some people stared.

But it was okay. 

It was okay. 

It is okay…. I repeated. 

The nerves returned and I felt like I had just burped in choir class. I didn’t even take choir. 

One heeled shoe in front of the other. Catching eyes with friends, I walked the length of the room. 

“A lady looks down to no one”, borrowed from my favorite princess movie.

The lights felt hot as they hit me, full blast. Was I sweating? Dear God, don’t let me be sweating right now. 

Who was I waking toward? Dear God, I hope that’s Jill. The light moved and shot a laser straight into my left eye. Dear God, do not let me walk to one of “their” tables. Lead me, please, to my friends and not the “popular crowd.” 

I’d be lying to say it wasn’t a little awkward. But I’d also be lying if I didn’t say it was one of my proudest moments. 

I made it to the safety of my (still) best friend and her date. She embraced me and immediately, the nerves subsided and I allowed myself to take in the room, my friends, the party. 

I’d walked the room. 

Alone. 

That one action, if traced back, planted the seed for the kind of confidence that would grow in me. It would become the ability to speak on front of a crowded room, or defend myself when no one else would, stand up for my daughter, present at conferences, and dance when everyone else isn’t.

As for my prom? 

I had a ball! 

And even as I drove myself home as friends went to parties and events, I was on top of the world. 

I moved, nine years later, into a home of my own. My house. 

Alone.

And that dress moved with me. 

It hangs in a closet, not worn in eighteen years. 

But, sometimes it’s about the dress.

Sometimes, it’s about a whole lot more.

• • •

Breadcrumb #676

SAHIB CHANDNANI

I am a protractor
Bending backwards 
How ever many degrees
It takes to squeeze every
Lecture for what I paid for it.

Problem #1:
Calculate the volume of this rectangular prism.
I worry so much about how much to put in 
I forget how to think outside of it.

I study angles and
I’m shaping up to be quite the actor.
There are no lights nor cameras but 
these people record every word and
I know which ones they’re looking for.

Problem #2:
Find the perimeter of this square.
I plot grids, crop yards, square feet,
Calculate to a tee how much fence
It takes to keep in profits, but
Can’t force a flower out of the garden.

I speak diamonds.
I pressure cook gems, these words are VVS, 
I develop an acute sense for the right angles.
See, I studied circles around subjects 
Just to fill circles with lead and never once 
Figured out how to do anything in 3-dimensions.

Problem #3:
Find the slope of this curve.
I make points by drawing graphs;
I become a Texas Instrument
To coordinate planes.'

• • •

Breadcrumb #675

SARA TICKANEN

You were 37 weeks when you died inside of me. There one instant and gone the next, and nobody knew you but me. Your entire life, every beat of your heart, fit on a single form that would be used to craft your obituary--a form I clutched in my hand as I hovered above a binder stuffed with urn pictures at a now nameless funeral home. I had to write an obituary and arrange a memorial and pick and urn where you’d rest forever and I wanted to do none of these things. You were gone, dead forever, an irreversible process. I wondered if I would be dead soon. 

When I flipped the pages without really seeing them, the funeral director (Coral? Carrie? Cori?) gently said, “Sometimes it’s hard just from photographs to tell which is the best one, to see what you might want to put him in. We have a showroom where--”

I pushed back my chair from the table before she could finish. A showroom. To see what I might want to put him in, like he was a deceased pet I would bury in the backyard. Perhaps the husband came with me; perhaps not. There were coffins suffocating me the instant I crossed the threshold. Coffins in all sizes and colors, from the obvious child size to what was clearly meant for an adult, from white with roses that seemed to sparkle to black with a simple molded border. But you were a baby, too tiny to fit in a coffin. And they wanted to burn you anyway, the husband, this Cori. I’d signed a form in the first five minutes of our meeting stating that cremation was permanent, even though I didn’t want it at all. If we burned you, we could never take it back; an irreversible process. I wanted to bury you. The husband wanted to throw you to the wind, and he always got his way. So you needed an urn, not a box. Where were the urns? It had to be right, this place you’d stay forever, another choice in the irreversible process. 

“There were coffins suffocating me the instant I crossed the threshold.”

I wished that you could tell me where you wanted to live forever. That I could take care of you, the way a mother was supposed to, that you would tell me the right way to do that. But you wouldn’t. You would never say any words at all, not to me, not to anyone. I would have to choose for you as the only person who had ever really known you.

Cori drifted in as my finger trailed along the nearest coffin, pulling up a surprising lack of dust, and quietly steered me into a small side room. She began to explain the differences in the urns without my having to ask. The large ones were obviously for adult remains. Those were generally darker shades, blacks and browns and grays, some with stripes, some with gold and silver molding, and some just one solid color. None of those were right. 

“Obviously your son was quite small.”

Her words stung, even though she hadn’t meant them that way.

“There are urns smaller than these,” Cori said as we left the adult urns behind. “Urns for babies. But there are also these.” She reached for a lower shelf and grabbed something else to pass to me. 

I didn’t see the difference really; it looked like so many of the other tiny urns. Would you like it? Did you have a favorite color? Could you tell me?

“These are special urns. For times when the family members each want to take a piece of the dead home with them. They’re smaller, cheaper, but more decorative.”

It was a morbid thought, dividing up the dead. I put the urn she’d handed me down and squatted to get a closer look at the shelf it had come from. I spotted one I thought I might like, if it was possible to like such a thing. It was a tiny bronze urn with a red satin case shaped like a heart; the urn rested in a small niche inside and the heart closed around it, like a jewelry box I’d filled with pennies as a child and hidden in the bottom drawer of my dresser. It spoke to the child in me, to those memories. Would it speak to the child you would never grow to be?

The idea that I’d be holding you close to my heart echoed in my head, a ridiculous thought, cheesy and sentimental, but the urn had its good points. If someone saw the heart tucked away on a shelf, they would never know there was a dead baby inside it. They would never know it contained all that was left of you. 

Maybe that wasn’t such a good thing, that they’d never know. That I would be the only one to carry your memory in the years to follow. But maybe, in time, I would never know. And that was worth it to me, that it might not hurt to look at you there someday. “This one.” I didn’t ask the husband’s input. Was he even at the room, or still at the table? Did he care at all? I really was on my own. 

Cori took the item number and led me back to the table where we would fill out yet another form. I didn’t really see the words there; it was too much. It didn’t matter, yet it mattered so much. I let everyone else in the room finalize the details without my input and watched as they finalized your death--a permanent, irreversible process. 

The day you came home in your red satin heart was the day the 2010 Census form came, and I didn’t know whether to answer two or three people in the household. You’d come home, but not really. You were there, and then gone. You were alive. You were mine. Then you were dead. 

An irreversible process. 

• • •

Breadcrumb #674

EMILY STOUT

There are so many things I didn’t understand
until I was burning in an amber fire
like a dumbstruck fly on a lightbulb,
but with more convictions.

I never knew people could conjure this 
kind of hurt for nothing, even when 
I was stabbing men at Orleans, 
I was doing it for victory. What victory 

did this bring? My young skin turned
black as an English furnace and I grasped
the cross tighter. I never asked
for love, but glory instead--

near impossible for a girl. Only after
my hair was singed, my breasts unsculpted,
did they paint me as worthy,
made in God’s great image.

• • •