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Rowena Carenen


She Got Sick

Fast.
And I couldn’t help.
 
I wrapped my constant companion
in a once white towel,
forced the murky mixture
of water and canned food,
that smelled like rancid
pate, down her throat
with a syringe.
 
Three times a day
for a week.
 
I held her, rocking,
for forty-five minutes,
and sang old hymns
while she tried to purr.
 
I’d lay on my stomach
to tell her about my day
so she wouldn’t be lonely
under the bed.
 
The last night she went blind
and lost the strength that propelled
her to the top of my dresser
in pursuit of slips and hair ties.
 
The vet and tech wept with me,
let me hold her, soothe her,
tell her I was so glad
she picked me to be her mom.
 
I’m still not sure, sometimes,
how to say goodbye.
There is still hair on my robe.
​

Place on Thyme

Books on shelves
paintings on walls
clothes in drawers and closets.
 
Plates commingle
wine glasses kiss
and matching scissors
sit atop the counter.
 
A new home and all
the boxes are empty
and my shampoo
sits in the shower.
 
Even my reading nook
nestles just so
by the window.
 
Sylvia sleeps schooched
into my knee pit, snoring
and sneezing.
 
Bea and I are up
past my bedtime
with hot toddies and giggles
and I am home.
 
But sometimes, when I first
wake before the sun
shines through coffee colored
curtains, I forget
that I sleep alone
and my rings are packed away.
​

Tea Time

I want to stop
remembering your teeth
on my earlobe,
how just a whisper
of breath hot
from want
creates chills.
My sternum contracts.
 
Tea sloshes, stains a
manuscript of someone
else's words and
I sigh.
 
Paper towels mop
my mistake,
preventing brown
from running green ink,
as I try to grow strong words.
 
Bounty is not strong
enough to clean crevices
in my cranium where
a stain darker, deeper
than tea tints memories
and I forget, for a moment,
that I was too long steeped.


​

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Rowena Carenen's Profile

Me, Again

The witness stand was directly in front
of the defense table and I did not
trip as I took it.
 
I tried not to look at you wearing the coat
from the suit I bought
for Stephen's wedding with pants
for the bank job you couldn't keep.
 
I kept eye contact
with our judge ("our" as if there were still
a "we" to be had between you and me)
and answered her questions.
 
The wavering of my voice on "irrevocably"
was not because I didn't believe it to be true
but because I didn't want it to be. I don't want
to be broken beyond repair. I want to look
you dead in the eye and say "Fix it! Fix me! Fix us!"
 
Ah, "us" again.
 
But I nod instead and say "yes ma'am"
and you don't cross me. You let me win
and the judge congratulates us. Wishes
us a Merry Christmas.
 
Us.
​

Bea and the Body Dump

​We had had a day:
children gone, crying clients,
and the end of the holidays
that left us both wanting.
 
The dead evergreen still cornered,
shedding perfect green needles,
needed to come down.
 
Each ornament sorted, wrapped,
and put away in the plastic
Tupperware bins bought
years ago at Target's
after-Christmas sale.
 
But what of the fir?
 
No harvested forests
lined our street and the neighbors
can't all've had plastic.
 
So I grab the discarded
top sheet, once paired
with a now hole-y bottom,
and we wrap the tree like a body.
 
We slide
in red clay oozing up
the heels of our boots,
as we hoist overhead.
Over the fence it must go
but we underestimated the height
of our hiding place.
 
I hold the departed
while she grabs the kitchen ladder
praying our neighbors don't see.
 
She climbs and I shove,
sap sticking in my hair and
clinging beneath my Saturday bra.
 
Our giggles explode into shrieks,
it is finished.
​

Skinned Knees

I thought I was done
with the body wracking sobs
that make my eyes swim red
as the vodka cranberry
I slurp through a bendy straw.
 
Hope is horrible because
she does not belong
to the one holding her in a wrought
iron cage, the tease.
 
Hope made me her bitch
and I thanked her for the opportunity
to have my knees give out
under what-ifs and possibilities.
 
I did not stumble,
I collapsed broken
on cobble stones
that skin my weak knees
until the caps poke
out of the ripped skin
and no bandaid
big enough to stop the bleed.
​
***

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