Five of Swords, for all my death girls - Marty McConnell

Betsy’s in the second stall practicing

with a plastic razor, so I lie on the floor

to listen for the janitor, the cart’s

loose wheel squeaking our names down

the evening-empty hallway. the weeks

she was at Lutheran General, I didn’t

go to visit. but I know from her stories

what the doors looked like, closing,

how they strapped her to the bed

for her own protection. we’re 17

and I adore her despair. I think she’s shining,

fearless, carving herself a body that’s nothing

but light. on the way home, she lets me

drive. tells me there’s a trick

to disintegrating in increments subtle enough

not to trip the alarm wires, to hiding cigarettes

and death from therapists and parents and this,

all my girls have had down: how to go and go

until the night is too fragile or grimy

and then the fanfare, the wild dive

from the spire, the water tower, the clock

yanking its hands back, how to dangle

from the spotlight once everybody’s

watching. 1999: we lie on Angie’s futon

searching the phonebook for institutions

that will take her without insurance, curl

our bodies into still commas of want

to wait for morning. they take

her shoelaces, and her cigarettes, and I watch.

they give her forms and more forms

and I watch. they walk her to the room

with its single bed and single dresser

and unsmashable mirror and I ride

the long, high buzz of the door back

to New York. 2003: Georgiana is an expert

in suicide and poetry. her medicine cabinet rattles

like a jar of vengeful bees. she wants me

to find her. all our idols are martyrs, not one of them

a saint. her hair drops like cabernet all the way

to her waist. and how she needs me. my simple body

becomes bread in her mouth, I’m whiskey,

an obliteration who’ll get up in the morning

to call the hospital and make coffee. oh,

my pretty ones in love with the beast

of disappearing, there are many ways

to give birth. not one is without pain.

there are almost as many ways to die

as there are to love. tonight, I drink to you

who chose to keep going, who moved

through my body like a chemical

I could not keep. the night stands outside

like a hungry dog on an old chain, the scent

of lilies rising from the half moons of his teeth.

go ahead. tuck your babies into bed

and lovers’ hair behind their soft ears, as if

there’s nothing left to fear.