Love is A Sling

It’s 5am when I emerge from the bathroom into the dark hallway
To find my mother clutching her arm
The nerve block wore off she sobs
Voice high pitched and wavering
Face twisted in agony
Pain referring from her tissues to mine.

I’m so sorry, Mom, let me help you—
I guide her to a chair at the table
Twist the cap off the Percocet
Pour a cup of water
The pill slides down her throat as I rush back
To the toilet bowl
To gag.

I never felt nausea from someone else’s pain before.

In her yard I see hedges, grass and trees
It’s quiet here in suburban San Diego
Not like Brooklyn with its sirens and fireworks
Construction and middle-of-the-night yelps.

Love is a sling
Deceptive in strength
Like the branches of trees
That make leaves possible
That make flowers and fruit.
And withstand storms.

I hurry back from the bathroom
Help my mother to the couch
Prop her up with pillows
Strap on the cooling compression device
Fill the water to the line
Drop in the ice, plug in the machine, put her feet up.
Switch on soft music as she lays back, eyelids fluttering shut.

Lilting melodies wrap around the wound
Like the cellophane I’ll wrap before her shower
After we remove the adhesive tape and
Dressings soaked through with blood.

I’ll support her arm with my own hands
As the water runs the length of her body
Which was my home.
Now we are each other’s homes.

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Amanda Erin Miller

Amanda Erin Miller is a Brooklyn-based writer and performer with an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from The New School. Her writing is forthcoming in JewishFiction.net and has appeared in The Quaranzine: Poetry in the Time of Covid-19: A Fearsome Critters Zine, Quaranzine: Art in Isolation, PEN America's Temperature Check, The Rumpus, Freerange Nonfiction, Cratelit, So Long: Short Memoirs of Loss and Remembrance, Underwired Magazine and other journals. She serves on the Nonfiction committee for PEN America’s Prison Writing Contest and has run the literary and performance series Lyrics, Lit & Liquor since 2012. Amanda is the author of One Breath, Then Another: A Memoir (2012) and co-editor of Words After Dark: A Lyrics, Lit & Liquor Anthology (2020). She has toured her solo shows The Jew in the Ashram and How To Suffer Better to numerous festivals and venues in the USA, Canada and Scotland. www.thejewintheashram.com

Latest posts by Amanda Erin Miller (see all)

• Love is A Sling - 12th February 2021