Missing Parts
BY ERIKA MEITNER
Hillary, I’m sorry about yr friend who killed himself—sometimes
this world is too much to hold inside us or move through
We pass a place called Crystal Cave and now Endless Caverns
as if we’re meant to be subterranean or sheltered in this storm
or always I’ve been spelunking
only once for real and at various points had to squeeze myself
through slick clay passages so narrow they felt like birth canals
and my friend Kate had to take an emergency Xanax in the darkness
before we turned back towards the cave’s mouth
We’ve been driving through the clouds hanging low over Mauzy
and Broadway and Timberville and every town on 81 for hours
in the dark and rain and I am not absent from this car
I am here I am silent lost in thought writing to you with a
husband driving & two sons in the back Are they
mine or just proximate? How or why do we claim anyone?
In yr last letter you asked me What if I can’t accept my own happiness?
and I consider this when my son asks How many satellites
are in the sky and how do people get them up there so easily?
I think the answer is rockets
I understand the wish to have yr body turned to ashes & dust
then scattered on water or wind or even shot into space
I do not know where I want to rest when I’m gone since
I don’t feel at home anywhere except some subway platforms
and when I’m in motion passing through corridors or terminals
Some days I think I’ve got a missing part—the satellite
that handles contentment which is a lot like happiness
which is the opposite of crisis
I am excellent in most emergencies but restless when I am with
my family in the car singing along to Purple Rain or even when
everyone is asleep in the backseat and it’s quiet except for
asphalt humming under our tires like radio static
The accumulation of dust is a kind of physical index
for the passage of time but to accumulate anything
in a fine coating you need to not-move
you need to be very still like a photograph of yrself
but even those are live now you can keep
a small fluttering on yr phone—the essence
of someone we pass fireworks nude girls
things outlawed then un- depending on state lines
we travel bodies of bridges stretched over water
the hometown of an old lover I still remember
his hipbones beneath mine and the way he drew me
a map of this exact highway with the birthplace
of Eugene O’Neill labeled in purple marker
O Connecticut you are an endless radar on the
interstate median tracking our speed my youngest
asking if we’ve put the wrong place into the GPS
I have lived what feels like many restless lives in this
one body Keep going—You didn’t fail at quitting
You just haven’t finished the process says a billboard
talking about smoking but maybe it could also pertain
to happiness we are in-process we are trying
so hard and the rain—we can barely see through
the windshield the rain, it won’t let up
