Poetry Thursday

 Change of Address

 ~Deborah Paredez

Rate your pain the physical

therapist instructs and I am trying

not to do what they say

women do lowballing the number

trying hard not to try so hard

to be the good patient scattered

assurances lining the aisles like

dead petals and me left

holding nothing but what’s been

emptied out obviously I am over-

thinking it when I settle on someplace

in the middle six or seven

times a week I walk past the street

vendor on Broadway and say

nothing while eyeing the same

pom-topped hat the physical

therapist asking me now

for the name of that Chinese place

where I sometimes go asking

for the patient just before me

a street vendor in need

of a cheap massage as I lay

the plain wreckage of my shoulders

in the shallow hollows

the street vendor’s body has left

on the padded table in the center

of the story I sometimes read

to my girl a cap seller sleeps

under a tree’s shade waking

to find the monkeys in the

branches above have plundered

his wares he waves his hands shakes

his fists until his rage makes him

throw his cap to the ground and the

monkeys mimic him and down

float his caps his fury finally

fulsome enough to restore

what he’s lost you’ve got to find

another way to move the physical

therapist modeling for me the poses

to mimic assuring her I won’t move

what’s left of the heavy boxes later

unpacking the last of them I learn

about the woman who once lived

here Charlotte who twisted the cap and shook

out the pills Charlotte who swallowed

and slipped into sleep in her last act

of volition here in this bedroom where

the westward windows go on longing

for dawn and I am trying to move in

a new way to pull the mess of sloughed

hair from the bathtub drain to move

in the space of another’s suffering

scrub the caked toothpaste

from the sink make a home

in the space where suffering

may meet its end.

Copyright © 2017 Deborah Paredez. Used with permission of the author.