Lockjaw

I can't get any words out

Or move any part of my body

Frozen in place with no one to hear me

And nowhere to go

That's what it felt like anyway

Tetanus enters the body from a deep wound

Dirty needles, rusty nails.

The hardest drugs I ever tried were pretty mild

But I've walked in thin-soled shoes through rubble and refuse

My aunt just died

Trembling with Parkinson's

I wasn't there

The cousins and uncles at the funeral didn't know who I am

How many daughters were in the black sheep branch?

They knew we'd come to no good

With no stabilizing paternal influence

The home I grew up in burned

It's still standing seven years later

Nobody cared enough to finish the job.

When I was in the neighborhood for the funeral

We went to see what was left

The yard where we buried dead pets and time capsules is overgrown

We couldn't find any markers

The holes in the floors feel familiar

The foundation had been rotting since my 3rd grade year

The bedroom wasn't my own anymore

A new branch had established since I left

But they still kept the bookcase

Full of donated outdated encyclopedias

They were my best shot at learning about the world

It wasn't enough

My New York City lover,

Whose graduating high school class dwarfs my whole town,

Told my to watch my step.

What did she know?

I'd lived the worst years of my life in that room.

What more could it do to me now?

She was right though.

The shards of broken glass and fallen timber were less literal in those days

And so I did step right onto a nail

Sticking out of board in a long-abandoned house

With the windows burst from the heat

Exposed to rain and wind and animals.

I could even see a nearby turd.

A classic recipe for lockjaw.

It didn't break the skin though

My soles are much thicker these days.