<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
She cries.<\/p>\n
“I don’t know what to do, I don’t know what to do, I just don’t know what to do!”<\/p>\n
A tremor in my voice, “I can’t tell you. I don’t know.”<\/p>\n
I’m afraid of her despair.<\/p>\n
I want to hold space, but I’m afraid.<\/p>\n
The phone is heavy.<\/p>\n
I rest my elbow on the brass headboard, leaning into its solidity for support.<\/p>\n
She says she can’t go to the gym. That’s how bad it is.<\/p>\n
But she can go get a spray tan.<\/p>\n
“Get your jacket on. Take the first step. It’s momentum.”<\/p>\n
She cries again, the high-pitched kind.<\/p>\n
“Should I come over?”<\/p>\n
I’m at a loss.<\/p>\n
I don’t want to come over.<\/p>\n
“I can meet you at the carport. Do you need me to drive?”<\/p>\n
She doesn’t want to go to the gym. She can’t. She’s repeating sentences, phrases, words.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Once, on a train ride through the open plains of New Mexico, I saw them,<\/p>\n
Rocky Mountain elk, in rushing herds, locomotive racing,<\/p>\n
my face pressed into the dirty window, wondering where they’re heading,<\/p>\n
asking myself the same, on an Amtrak, mid-winter, heading home, where I no longer belonged.<\/p>\n
I couldn’t cry then, but those sleek animals, full of grace and urgency, hollowed me,<\/p>\n
gutted my very being, and I sat soulless, unable to move forward or turn back–<\/p>\n
blurring through space and time, boundless but not free.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I’m empty now, too. I can’t help you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
She cries. “I don’t know what to do, I don’t know what to do, I just don’t know what to do!” A tremor in my voice, “I can’t tell you. I don’t know.” I’m afraid of her despair. I want to hold space,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":196,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-134541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marathon-poem"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/196"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134541"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134541\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":134875,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134541\/revisions\/134875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}