If I look in and back and down
the years
I can forever see Cheryl there
The first time I ever met her
1145 W Morse Avenue, Chicago,
East Rogers Park, strange attic of the city
Freeze-framed on the stairwell to nowhere
In between floors and levels of life
21 years old, speaking silent and slow
Living upstairs from me by herself
A Loyola student along the road, mom paid her rent
Crippled hand covered up by her jacket
Had a stroke when her birth control
Reacted badly with some other meds she was on
Doing hand-uncurl exercises, slowly getting the use back
But of course not soon enough for her
I used to help her with stuff from her car
Or supervise her swimming in Lake Michigan
She couldn’t go in unless she was accompanied
Once or twice she played me songs from a book
One-handed on her small electronic keyboard
Telling me stories about her privileged life until now
Far from her corporate CEO mother’s roomy home
A bored archetypal clichéd rich kid girl burnout
Said she’d been around the sexual block
So many times she’d lost count
A flat dry young female realm of nothing much emotional
But still with a sad dull subcutaneous pain throb somewhere
She and her older brother used to leave the suburbs
Sneak on down to the horny taboo South Side
For kicks and shits and snorting bullfight giggles
Drugs and finally living carelessly and dangerously
Far from the maddening accountant crowd
Reality is a such a fun nice place to visit
But you wouldn’t want to live there
Raped by a young black guy at a party
When she was only 14 years old
Her failing family revelations slowly tumbling out
As hot burning therapy-speak coals of shrugging bleak dismay
She had no normal sensible conversational parameters
Seeing a psychologist of course shining light round her battle
Would discuss anything like I was her mental health professional
The weird static discharge abnormal was totally fine with her
Drugs, rape, how she used to “do things with her brother,”
A maybe-innocent statement I never bothered inquiring into who knows
Showed me a photo of her older partner in crime one time
Hunted-looking, strong, spoiled, arsenic fever dementia raging
Lights of financially secure aggression burning in bored haunted eyes
Reading into his face, tracing mad hurt-me experience lines there
And then one day of course just like in all big-budget horror movies
Came the inevitable lightning bolt overdose and shot of death
Young man, gone but still resonating through burning internal air
Dad broken-heart-attack died the same damned pain overdose day
And so here was Cheryl right here and now broken and tranquilized
Swimming sinking through bad life riptides, death, despair, decay,
Her body chemically attacking her losing her brother and father
And faith in a no-pain-gain future further down the line
All sorts of theories on pharmaceutical drug problem solvers,
Studying, loving cupcakes, trivial soothing purring of kittens
But scorched earth inside, removed from live student life
And the reality of the four skintight studio apartment walls around her
Slumming it in her small “shitty” apartment with the poor
Whining at her mother about only wanting one small thing
For next year, for her to pay for daughter and boyfriend
To go on one tiny minor trip to Europe together, such a small thing
This in a building full of drug addicts, burnouts, misfits,
Government-housed mental health cases, deaf and dumb and crazy,
Gay black heart-attacked pensioners, liars, misfires, spitfires,
Drug dealers, thugs, homeless corridor sleepers, gunwavers,
People who indulged in domestic violence for bloodsport
Or had early morning echoing-cry cybersex in the lobby
Where they could leech a decent free hot fuck wi-fi signal
And yet for this young woman it was such a tragedy
That her mommy wouldn’t give her thousands of dollars
For one teeny-weeny CEO-needling trip abroad
A tragedy of epic proportions and oh well so what
She sent me an offensive email one time, oblivious
As to the obvious nature of it spoiled, damaged, condescending,
Mollycoddled, befuddled, and I just stopped talking to her
And life went on and I moved on into doing other things
Until one Saturday I came back from my live-in caregiver job
Out in Palatine, Monday 10am to Saturday 10am, and
Outside the building I met my neighbor Benon, who, frowning,
Asked me if had heard anything about Cheryl
“No,” I shook my head, “what do you mean?”
“She killed herself, she hung herself,
“You didn’t hear about it?”
I shook my head again, sighing, and we had a brief
Life-and-death recap conversation about her,
With me saying I hadn’t talked to her in months
Didn’t know her well or long, no real fake sentiments here
Then I went upstairs and thought about her two floors above
Somehow one-handed tying a perfect fumbling murder knot to go
Her twitching dying body dangling, piss dripping down her leg
Like her waters breaking for her to be borne away into therapeutic welcoming death
And a final resting peace away from small apartments, strokes, unfinished classes,
Dead family members, canceled European vacations, old bedroom teddy bears,
Lack of mommy and daddy attention, city runs, the hot slow babbling flood
Running in crying rivulets down through the absorbing floorboards
Through a conspiratorial crack in the outside wall
To wind down to meet with nearby Lake Michigan
Twin tides bearing down on each other in flatline amniotic alarm
A final natural mixing of hot and cold, life and death,
Waste and water slowing to a drip and drizzle and drop in pressure
Cooling to nothing, a comfort blanket of all-black child-song lullaby-singing
Where all good things must come to a beginning of no heartbeat
Finally able to freely explore the lake by herself forevermore.
I went online a few days later and saw the memorial page for her
Played a sad off-key terrible cheesy fake organ Kyrie eleison
Flashbacks to her one-handed one-person mini apartment concert
As I sighed and saluted her life and death as a hardly-knowing neighbor
And left her and her grieving friends’ and boyfriend’s and mother’s words
Twisting in the impersonal cyberwind of guttering flame-spent memorial
And I pictured her devastated mother, gone from a whole full
Family of supposedly infinite horizon of American dream promise
Down to just her in a few short years, face never warmed
By the fake electronic candle light of a few short monitor-scrawled memories
No maps to start to figure it out where it went wrong, swansong confused,
No fingers on the now-still pulse to capture an ever-fainter hint of clue
Sitting passing heavy gold nothing pieces from hand to fumbling barren hand
A huge house full of reverberating silence and a painful memory gallery
As she numbly pondered where it all cracked and fell to the middle class ground
And she sudden-shock came to bitterly realize that
All the CEO queen’s horsepower
And all the queen’s ken
Couldn’t put family
Together
Again.
I can forever see Cheryl there
The first time I ever met her
1145 W Morse Avenue, Chicago,
East Rogers Park, strange attic of the city
Freeze-framed on the stairwell to nowhere
In between floors and levels of life
21 years old, speaking silent and slow
Living upstairs from me by herself
A Loyola student along the road, mom paid her rent
Crippled hand covered up by her jacket
Had a stroke when her birth control
Reacted badly with some other meds she was on
Doing hand-uncurl exercises, slowly getting the use back
But of course not soon enough for her
I used to help her with stuff from her car
Or supervise her swimming in Lake Michigan
She couldn’t go in unless she was accompanied
Once or twice she played me songs from a book
One-handed on her small electronic keyboard
Telling me stories about her privileged life until now
Far from her corporate CEO mother’s roomy home
A bored archetypal clichéd rich kid girl burnout
Said she’d been around the sexual block
So many times she’d lost count
A flat dry young female realm of nothing much emotional
But still with a sad dull subcutaneous pain throb somewhere
She and her older brother used to leave the suburbs
Sneak on down to the horny taboo South Side
For kicks and shits and snorting bullfight giggles
Drugs and finally living carelessly and dangerously
Far from the maddening accountant crowd
Reality is a such a fun nice place to visit
But you wouldn’t want to live there
Raped by a young black guy at a party
When she was only 14 years old
Her failing family revelations slowly tumbling out
As hot burning therapy-speak coals of shrugging bleak dismay
She had no normal sensible conversational parameters
Seeing a psychologist of course shining light round her battle
Would discuss anything like I was her mental health professional
The weird static discharge abnormal was totally fine with her
Drugs, rape, how she used to “do things with her brother,”
A maybe-innocent statement I never bothered inquiring into who knows
Showed me a photo of her older partner in crime one time
Hunted-looking, strong, spoiled, arsenic fever dementia raging
Lights of financially secure aggression burning in bored haunted eyes
Reading into his face, tracing mad hurt-me experience lines there
And then one day of course just like in all big-budget horror movies
Came the inevitable lightning bolt overdose and shot of death
Young man, gone but still resonating through burning internal air
Dad broken-heart-attack died the same damned pain overdose day
And so here was Cheryl right here and now broken and tranquilized
Swimming sinking through bad life riptides, death, despair, decay,
Her body chemically attacking her losing her brother and father
And faith in a no-pain-gain future further down the line
All sorts of theories on pharmaceutical drug problem solvers,
Studying, loving cupcakes, trivial soothing purring of kittens
But scorched earth inside, removed from live student life
And the reality of the four skintight studio apartment walls around her
Slumming it in her small “shitty” apartment with the poor
Whining at her mother about only wanting one small thing
For next year, for her to pay for daughter and boyfriend
To go on one tiny minor trip to Europe together, such a small thing
This in a building full of drug addicts, burnouts, misfits,
Government-housed mental health cases, deaf and dumb and crazy,
Gay black heart-attacked pensioners, liars, misfires, spitfires,
Drug dealers, thugs, homeless corridor sleepers, gunwavers,
People who indulged in domestic violence for bloodsport
Or had early morning echoing-cry cybersex in the lobby
Where they could leech a decent free hot fuck wi-fi signal
And yet for this young woman it was such a tragedy
That her mommy wouldn’t give her thousands of dollars
For one teeny-weeny CEO-needling trip abroad
A tragedy of epic proportions and oh well so what
She sent me an offensive email one time, oblivious
As to the obvious nature of it spoiled, damaged, condescending,
Mollycoddled, befuddled, and I just stopped talking to her
And life went on and I moved on into doing other things
Until one Saturday I came back from my live-in caregiver job
Out in Palatine, Monday 10am to Saturday 10am, and
Outside the building I met my neighbor Benon, who, frowning,
Asked me if had heard anything about Cheryl
“No,” I shook my head, “what do you mean?”
“She killed herself, she hung herself,
“You didn’t hear about it?”
I shook my head again, sighing, and we had a brief
Life-and-death recap conversation about her,
With me saying I hadn’t talked to her in months
Didn’t know her well or long, no real fake sentiments here
Then I went upstairs and thought about her two floors above
Somehow one-handed tying a perfect fumbling murder knot to go
Her twitching dying body dangling, piss dripping down her leg
Like her waters breaking for her to be borne away into therapeutic welcoming death
And a final resting peace away from small apartments, strokes, unfinished classes,
Dead family members, canceled European vacations, old bedroom teddy bears,
Lack of mommy and daddy attention, city runs, the hot slow babbling flood
Running in crying rivulets down through the absorbing floorboards
Through a conspiratorial crack in the outside wall
To wind down to meet with nearby Lake Michigan
Twin tides bearing down on each other in flatline amniotic alarm
A final natural mixing of hot and cold, life and death,
Waste and water slowing to a drip and drizzle and drop in pressure
Cooling to nothing, a comfort blanket of all-black child-song lullaby-singing
Where all good things must come to a beginning of no heartbeat
Finally able to freely explore the lake by herself forevermore.
I went online a few days later and saw the memorial page for her
Played a sad off-key terrible cheesy fake organ Kyrie eleison
Flashbacks to her one-handed one-person mini apartment concert
As I sighed and saluted her life and death as a hardly-knowing neighbor
And left her and her grieving friends’ and boyfriend’s and mother’s words
Twisting in the impersonal cyberwind of guttering flame-spent memorial
And I pictured her devastated mother, gone from a whole full
Family of supposedly infinite horizon of American dream promise
Down to just her in a few short years, face never warmed
By the fake electronic candle light of a few short monitor-scrawled memories
No maps to start to figure it out where it went wrong, swansong confused,
No fingers on the now-still pulse to capture an ever-fainter hint of clue
Sitting passing heavy gold nothing pieces from hand to fumbling barren hand
A huge house full of reverberating silence and a painful memory gallery
As she numbly pondered where it all cracked and fell to the middle class ground
And she sudden-shock came to bitterly realize that
All the CEO queen’s horsepower
And all the queen’s ken
Couldn’t put family
Together
Again.
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