As the World Turns

—in memory of Georgiana Pollard

I perch on the toilet behind the shut door,
knees clamped tightly, fingers in my ears,
watching globes rise and explode behind my lids.

I move a hand to the knob, try to pull the door tighter.
Beyond it, my mother, home from seeing patients,
cracks the air with her burning voice:

How can you, how can you drink
while you’re responsible for my child?
I can half-hear Georgie murmur in reply,

helpless in excuse, apology. And then she’s gone.
But I loved them both. Those long days, Georgie’s voice
wafting blues from the kitchen: This bitter earth,

well, what a fruit it bears. . . .  How I sat with her,
pressed close to her warm body in its uniform,
as we watched soaps on our black-and-white TV.

Her apartment far downtown by the East River:
I stayed over there sometimes, thinking wonderingly,
she has another life. Yet trembling behind the door,

what could I say—what words find even here
to give myself back then? I was learning
my primal story: how an ordinary day can shatter,

how a woman can vanish, and there will be nothing
on earth I can do to stop it. I’ll come to know its room
always inside me—that bright, howling place.