PoetryAloud
Amy Billone Reads
First WordsThe same way at five I stared from the tub
into my father’s terrified eyes after he broke the bathroom door to save me because I hadn’t heard his calls and as he shook my body to bring me back to life I laughed and told him I didn’t drown, the soap bubbles only filled my ears-- The same way at eight I looked into his gasping face after he leapt from a moving car because I lay sprawled on the grass by an upside-down bicycle and as he lifted me with shaking arms I said I hadn’t fallen but was writing a poem about how the clouds were really cotton candy—The same way at sixteen I crashed my car into a street light and fainted on the hardware store floor, then woke to see him gazing blankly at me from the doorway too frightened to remember the name of my hospital so I said it for him—The same way in my twenties I regained consciousness after a six and a half day coma because I jumped in front of a train I was so surprised to recognize my pale-cheeked father waiting like a marble statue by my side when we rarely talked and he lived in a distant city that I spoke my first words even though doctors had said if I survived I would never recover language: Hi Dad. |
Amy Billone
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