Adverse Childhood Experiences Study
both my parents went slowly to the other side of
knowing. they swam
for years in the River Lethe, all about them floating
botanical fragments of memory:
broken strands of frogs’ eggs and frayed sleeves of
pond reeds, skipping
stones spidered with oxygenated holes, eroded
arrowheads of mussel
shells, and swollen bags of concrete. their fingers
trawled the hospital-gray
bed of gravel beneath. having in common oblivion
disguised as transition
their bodies, in water, became new to one another.
soaked flaps of seaweed
amber and green-black, slid from their skin like masks.
in the end
they’d swear they never met–a niceness unexpected
on the other side
of a gunpoint. better not to remember the first steps of
abandonment, hands
enclosing wrists as he kneeled to restrain her on the
concrete, their locked
feet scrambling a last dance in the gravel dust of the
driveway. better for death
to give its only gift: relief from the living
things we can’t unsee.
published in Epiphany, Winter 2022