Lunchbox Poems

How I’ve changed may not be apparent.

I limp. Read and write, make tea at the stove

as I practiced in rehab. Sometimes, like fire,

a task overwhelms me. I cry for days, shriek

when the phone rings. Like a page pulled from flame,

I’m singed but intact: I don’t burn down the house.

Later, cleared to drive, I did outpatient rehab. Others

lost legs or clutched withered minds in their hands.

A man who can’t speak recognized me

and held up his finger. I knew he meant

One year since your surgery. Sixteen since his.

Guadalupe wishes daily to be the one before. Nobody

is that. Sometimes, like love, the neurons just cross fire.

You don’t get everything back.

PATRICIA KIRKPATRICK