Praying at the Temple of Forgiveness
for Zea Joy, in memoriam
Last Monday you threw yourself,
your body, dressed in red chemise,
in front of a train.
It was your insatiable hunger
for a more tenderhearted world,
your husband said at Shiva.
Now no one will get to see
what you saw from inside
your snow globe where you lived,
shaking and shaking,
breaking into shards
of ungrieved grief, unanswered need.
I will remember
how tirelessly, with your son,
you worked to help him turn
sounds—coming through the implant
behind his ear—into speech,
speech into understanding.
Everyone will remember
how you skipped across the dance floor,
waving pastel and magenta scarves,
and prayed to angels.
O, dear Zea, your human bones
thin as the bones of a sparrow—
the way you could fold
your body to fit anywhere.
Rest now. You have succeeded.
• • •
Uncursing Tourette’s
I walk away so my son can save
face, finish tapping on the corners
of the kitchen counter. Not sure
if there is a certain number of taps
that tell him he’s done, or just a feeling
in his body that settles down.
At the front door his goodbye hug
penetrates like soothing balm or a bullet
of memory. He smiles down at me. Gazes
long into my eyes. It hasn’t always
been this way. Years ago my son asked,
Why did God curse me this way?
I hope I said something comforting.
His second hug adjusts my spine
with the crackle my chiropractor charges
big bucks to accomplish. Years ago
a chief doctor at Children’s said,
You’re getting off easy. Look
at the kids bald from chemo or guided
by seeing eyes. Tourette’s is nothing
life-threatening. Ten years from now,
when he gets into an Ivy School, call me.
So I went home and practiced only limping
gratitudes while my son practiced his heart
out, three-point throws and layups
with no one to block his shots.
Nothing life-threatening, I chanted,
just my boy’s head jerking back
like repeated recoils from a fired gun.
Just my boy’s tongue licking the air
like a gecko tasting for sweet answers.
Only an arm popping in its socket like a spring
mechanism of a haywire clock. To be one
with his tics my son jostled in mosh pits,
jammed on bass and snare, sweated in obscure
body arts of swords, Shashka, Systema
to discipline limbs, breath, and tics
Eastern doctors call internal winds.
Ivy and mastery accomplished, winds quieted
except sometimes, as he opens the door, Tourette’s
makes his index finger point upward without him
wanting it to, as if to show the spot
where the answer is written.
• • •
Doris Ferleger, prize-winning poet and essayist is author of three full length poetry volumes entitled Big Silences in a Year of Rain, Leavened, and As the Moon Has Breath, and a chapbook entitled When You Become Snow.