Stacy Boe Miller
A Song at The End of The Season of The Wrist
Praise the four pins a surgeon stuck
into my wrist so for 6 weeks
I was a lonely Frankenstein—
hideous, in pain, and refusing more and more
to get dressed, to leave the house, to roll off
my bed. Praise the shock
on people’s faces when I say
like a challenge, My bones
are fusing
even as we speak. Praise the way
I cried when the nurse tugged at the stubborn
stitches in my palm and the way, when she left
the room, I said out loud
“I want my dad,” even though
he’s been dead seven years now—
beneath a hard prairie
where cows come to graze
and the sun perches on the horizon
longer than it’s allowed.
Praise how I like to pretend
he’s telling jokes to his dead friends or
learning to play the piano—a song he’s always
loved finally coming
together, “Yellow Rose of Texas” maybe
or “Tennessee Waltz.” Praise how pain
reveals a child just under
our middle-aged skin and how good it feels
when a loved one puts in your ponytail or
is there waiting with a blob of shampoo
when you poke one good hand
out of the shower curtain. Praise the old,
ugly doctor who didn’t even tell me
about the pins, and I only knew
when I saw them stabbing through
my unfamiliar wrist
days after surgery when a sweet nurse
removed the bandages. Praise Camas,
that sweet nurse who kept saying
you’re doing so good, despite
my shaking and tears, her name
a song the prairie sings in little notes
of purple and pedal, and maybe there
are some right now near my father,
wherever he may be, a budding musician
or crumbling bones.
Maiden Name
You can forget
you’re singular—
skin protecting you
from getting all mixed up.
As though
you could really be
connected
to someone
else.
I changed
my name today.
Got a conference room
to attend the hearing
where I would sit
with my corporate
lanyard, and the judge
would say Congratulations!
Best of luck! And I
would wonder
if he thought I was attractive.
I went right back
to the ground floor
where I work—ten minutes late
for my next meeting, and no one
even knew
I was back
to myself after
twenty years.
Home now
in a bath and I guess
I thought my love
for the world,
for my new partner
would send up
some kind of flair—
I’ve lit seven candles,
poured a glass of whiskey.
What I mean to say is
I’m all alone
with my little self
back in 1999
when she signed a document
and it was easy
to feel grown,
to sign a name away
tied all the way back
to Norway. Who cares?
All us women of a certain
age—dragging the same
story behind us.
Seven of us
logging into Zoom
in the middle
of a workday. And I fooled
myself into thinking
we’re not left
with just our own prickly
bodies, our younger selves
side-eyeing us
for letting a hairline crack in
to that railroad tie wall
we built so skillfully
around our tender, aging hearts.
Stacy Boe Miller is a prose writer and a poet. Her work can be found in The Sun, Copper Nickel, Mid-American Review, Bellingham Review, Terrain.org, and other journals. Her book Ready to Answer With Hunger is forthcoming from C&R Books. Her book I Sharpen My Teeth was a finalist for the Wheeler Prize and The Poetry Book Prize with Barrow Street Press. More of her work, including information about the WorkWhile podcast can be found at stacyboemiller.com.
Artwork: “Bloom Tomb” by Daniel Lurie
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