Along Third Street

 South Gilbert is mostly empty
 and ignorant of my resolutions.
  This is my first time back since you died
  and everyone has been prattling on about
 what would have happened had you
 not gone down the stairs to the cellar.
 This is as productive as me wondering
 about what would have happened had 
 I known how to save myself with a condom.
 I mean, it’s not like this is as useless
 as me parked just down from your 
 house and apologizing to you for
 missing your funeral. Once things are gone
 they’re gone and some things
  just cannot be told.
 You either live them 
 or you don’t but 
 you can’t tell about them. Especially
 after you’re gone, the sun has long 
 since set, and the street lights have come 
 on along Third Street. 




 For Grief and for Ironing

 Mary Elizabeth Snook ironed on the day Grandpa
 Cecil Hayes died at 3:15 am and then she made
 cake, macaroni salad, scalloped corn, and goulash
 to bring to my Nana’s house. She ironed
 the day her ear hurt so badly that she
 vomited and then rallied to go to the A & P to
 get groceries and later babysat by mom and
 my aunt. She ironed the day
 she and my great grandpa arrived back
 from a vacay to Mammoth Cave and found out Mrs.
 Dickie’s mother died. Then she made pies for the
 funeral. When her ulcers were paining her
 and my great grandpa crossed the G.E. 
 picket line to get his pay check, she ironed.
 All of those days and nights Earl stayed gone 
 and even when he hopped a bus to Indy to
 join the Air Force, she ironed. When Larry 
 sold his ’37 Chevy for $18 she ironed. The day
 my great grandpa fixed the coal room to
 be cemented she canned 3 pints of peppers, 9 
 pints of beets, and 5 quarts of gooseberries and then she ironed. 
 She ironed on the days I visited when I
 stood apart not knowing what to say to
 her age and her gray and her creaky voice. I was too
 young to listen to her hands speak and to hear
 her eyes reveal how some human unions
 end in doom and others create exquisite detail and
 renditions not previously recorded. Yesterday, I stopped 
 for grief and for ironing
 and I felt as old as I was born
 with nothing to be told that would
 fill 10 five-year diaries worth of life. If I were
 with her today I would walk with her
  in her garden and tell her all about how some days
 I barely know how to iron at all.


With Authority and One Purpose

 the most silent thing in the room was me
 lying arms spread
 velcroed down
 amid summoning circuitry 
 and questioning beeps
 and the Blacksmith Surgical Caesarean Section Set
 88 gleaming instruments of disregard
 lined up neatly
 with authority
 and one purpose
 I spoke politely 
 first
 then with growing urgency
 then with repetitious bluntness
 “I am NOT numb on my right side”
 he was full up on Disbelief 
 founded entirely upon the
 blind knowing of his things
 that the logic and boundaries of his world
 would not allow for me
 the staccato of his ‘S’s’ 
 hissed so close to my ear 
 I could feel the moisture 
 in his breath
 “The worst is over”
 my heart pounded His Machines
 warning
 mustering
 until my veins burned with the poison of silence
 until my vision spilled in lazy circles
 until reason was blunted nearly gagging me
 “You drugged me,” I wailed
 shocked by my disacknowledgement
 and numb only with the realization
 that no outward force would compel
  this man to hear me
 when the scalpel sliced
 supremely sharp
 against the layers of my abdomen
 its awful beauty too much
 for my nervous system to process
 I was the loudest thing in the room
 even next to the swearing of my OB
 the horrific clamor of 87 instruments hitting the floor
 the footsteps of so many people scrambling
 and the Apostle of Disbelief
 defending his crime of Unwillingness
 louder than them all
 as the Man and His Machines
 undid me  


 Out by the Shed

 Out by the shed I burn 
 a year and half of mandatory
 chemically induced menopause.
 I’m a bonfire of release
 crackling with a decade of
 abundant off label overprescribing of
 fentanyl patches, gabapentin, and each new pain pill on the 
 market. My hair is covered in charred pieces of
 my Defiance and Non-Compliance
 when I had the nerve to tell you
 that getting pregnant again was no cure
 for Endometriosis, for someone heavily 
 medicated and in pain and with two special needs kids.
 The ashes of your fire of authority
 are sucked straight up into the moon
 a swirling snowstorm of 
 involuntary therapies.
 You used to line up the objects
 on your desk over and over
 thinking you were the source of light
 and heat and order but now I don’t need to stand
 by the flames of your misguided treatments
 and your habits of disbelief.
 I stomp on the parts of you still moving
 then I cremate you
 and you drift over West Woods
 your ashes silhouetted against
 Sirius and the rings of Saturn singing.
  I hid things in the dark
 and yielded to excruciating pain out of deep love
 and self-imposed expectations that because
  I could tolerate anything I should.
 The blaze of you coats my mouth.
 You diagnosed me into pieces 
 that took forever to collect. Now
 I’m a Firestarter.

 
Me Going Gone

 the doctor scribbles, dictates terms, goes in and out of doors
 the man doubts
 he checks boxes
 he confuses injury for illness and can’t help connecting disconnected things that shouldn’t be connected
 everything but this man is made of me
 none of the medications he prescribes are for him at all and his legs are never hoisted into stirrups that screech and scream like our neighbor’s cat, Zoe, who murdered a baby raccoon on our garbage can one sticky summer night
 this is the sound of me going gone  

Melissa Mulvihill writes from northeast Ohio where she lives with her husband and sons, 18 and 23. She has been published in multiple issues of The Blue Nib Literary Magazine, Intermission E-Zine, The Write Launch Literary Magazine, Poet’s Haven Digest, Strange Land Anthology, The Distance Between Insanity and Genius Anthology, and It Was a Dark and Stormy Night Anthology. Her poem, Your Phone Call, appeared in The Blue Nib 2017 Anthology. She writes about homeschooling and growing kids during a decade long battle with stage 4 Endometriosis and she shares stories that demand to be told from her childhood in Danville, Illinois. She has poems forthcoming at the Feminine Collective.