Canoe
Something is wrong with my husband’s throat. Doctors
have names for it — I don’t know what they are —
but sometimes, after chewing chicken or bread, the food
sticks. (I think of a river too thin for a passing canoe.)
He is always polite — embarrassed really — and spits
in a cup, unable to swallow, on a quiet ride to a hospital.
I do not drive him there. His father went once, another time
his mother. I stay home with our baby. I say: “The baby
can’t go,” or “The baby is tired.” What I mean is:
I can’t see him wrapped in paper, a mask over his handsome
head, the slow sleep of drugs in his arm. If I don’t sit at
his bedside I can pretend we are too young for bedsides,
that his health is as strong as his will, that we are likely
to stay healthy and upright, the river under us where it belongs.