Reading Russell Banks's "Lost Memory of Skin," I See I'm Missing my Ankle Bracelet

Paranoid, you see them from the conning tower catch your blip on radar
and shoulder arms, sighting down the barrel, waiting for closer range.
I look up.

“You are permitted to go to church and to doctors’ offices. Otherwise,
say nothing,” Terry says. She goes home to buck bales, I go home to sit
on me arse.

Heidi thought it a hobby. At her request, I handed her “Elegy” (of floods
in NOLA) and “Lagniappe” (of uncertain subject). She looks at me like
I’m alive.

After church in my boyhood and in Irene’s girlhood, you know what we’d do?
Sure you do. I talk about it all the time, never truly got over having her love.
I wonder why.

At the doctors’ offices, Chan tells me I will be fine if I follow Carron’s orders,
and Carron says I’ll be fine if I keep the body’s zones in mind, no bending
over ninety degrees.

What happens after Benbow’s? Will the Professor get the Kid permission
to stay? Now I’ll shut up and read some more. After all, I am in my own
home.

Instead, we go for a drive, I get out and walk on the walker. A circle made,
I hobble back. In the house I cheat, I walk without walker or cane, I stay
on my feet.

(2 October 2011)

copyright 2011 by Floyce Alexander