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LUNGS

Sometimes you slam your fingers
in the door and wonder why
you can’t stop crying.
Lungs are for grief, so breathe.

Your asthma worse after you got fired,
your lungs took the blow for you—
tender organ, lid, Imperial carriage roof—
mediator of inside and out.

And snow falls early over everything
that makes you cry: the slammed fingers,
the job, the shotgun lesson, its kick
a shock that sent you into the house.

What’s worse: crying after the first time
shooting a gun or hiding tears from your husband?
Today you can’t keep it in, so breathe,
lungs are for grief. You read,

I never had a father, in a poem
and cry for yours, dead eight years,
from whom you also hid sorrow,
who would appear in the deep night

and fill the bathroom with steam
to break up the croup that woke you
choking most of your fifth year,
your lungs already taking the brunt.

Marie-Elizabeth Mali

Reprinted from Pebble Lake Review, Health & Illness Issue, 2009, by permission