Patricia Kirkpatrick

The brain, like the earth, lies in layers. Floaters dart and punch. I see the field. My face stays numb.Keep your eye on the target. Click the button when a light appears. Last night I read “So little evidence is left of what had vanished

How I’ve changed may not be apparent. I limp. Read and write, make tea at the stove as I practiced in rehab. Sometimes, like fire, a task overwhelms me. I cry for days, shriek when the phone rings. Like a page pulled from flame, I’m singed but intact: I don’t burn down the house. Later, cleared to drive, I did outpatient rehab. Others lost legs or clutched withered minds in their hands. A man who can’t speak recognized me and held up his finger. I knew he meant One year since your surgery. Sixteen since his. Guadalupe wishes daily to be the one before. Nobody is that. Sometimes, like love, the neurons just cross fire. You don’t get everything back.

You don’t get everything back. Is today morning or night? The radio voice says the composer is changing the place home is. When they try to put a tube down her throat, the woman beside me sobs. Nurses probe a vein as she thrashes, call the Hmong translator. Once a boy told me, in Laos he sat in a tree all night.Father pay me dollar for every man I’m shooting. When there’s water to cross, the fish, caught, get needled through gill slits. Down the dark hall, machines bleat at each bed. Eyes open and shut: flashes, detachment, vitreous gel. Her son, seven years old, comes after school, peels oranges, watches football, changing the place home is.