Those days before

After Marie Howe
My father held death tightly within his palm
so as not to encourage it

from leaping out into the world. After living for
forty years, he stopped eating red meat and soon salt,

convinced himself poultry and tomatoes cured all
illnesses. He checked the nutrition labels as if God

wrote them himself, avoided the doctor’s
if he could. My father could lift one thousand pounds,

make waves from a battle rope.
Imagine the pain

when his body turned on him, when the doctors
injected six IVs throughout his body

as well as hung new blood on the patient monitor’s
hooks. He denied death

who began to pry his palm open, learned how to breathe
while his swollen spleen disguised itself as a beer gut.

My father told me to go any college,
that he would find money

or something to pay. His social security is still here,
ready to fund my future

until the day he was admitted. Then we faced
his wishbone body creak with the monitor,

my mother repeated to me those days before:
Somehow I think that little bastard will make it,

he’s tough. And he was. And the day he went
into dialysis I saw him

half-human, half-IVs, oxygen fastened between and inside
his nostrils. Before he went for more IVs, more

tubes, I pulled his socks over his yellow feet,
jammed his shoes on and trembled.

As they wheeled him out he told me this:
Go Lexi, don’t stay here waiting for me.

Author: Alexandra Naparstek

Alexandra Naparstek is a senior at Douglas Anderson School of the Arts and a poetry editor of her school’s international literary magazine, Élan. Her poetry has been published in the Inlandia Journal, Élan, in a forthcoming edition of River Rising, and has been recognized by the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. She is most recognized for her eight-bit Bowser bumper sticker and her love for Siberian sheep herders.

 

artist: Juan Cajigas

Juan Cajigas is a film photographer based between Orlando and New York City. He shoots scening photos and portraits using his 35 mm Konica camera.

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