Gone?

When he called me from the hospital, first to inform me of his emergency admission and then to update me pre-quintuple bypass surgery, I became concerned. I fret about his well-being, the procedure, his recovery. Will he be able to practice again?  Will he even survive?

Worry is not healthy, I tell my obsessive self. So I diligently apply some alternative coping techniques: I cheer for a winner. I pray for my doctor, his family, the surgical team. I take a long walk. Still no news. No confirmation of surgical success, no release plans, no reassurance of recuperation or rehab.

This is not going well.

I face my own reality: I am a hapless fan in the stands, a caring onlooker. I have no right to expect inside knowledge of strategy or score. I am a sleepless, miserable ticket-holder in a peanut heaven seat, curled up in a mental fetal position.

Assumption: the game has been called.

Gone? Is he off the team? No, that can’t be, I tell myself. A seasoned player with exceptional skill at breathing life back into the breathless. Affirming. Confirming. Team builder. A giver. A gift. Just gone? Off my team?

I resist the temptation to check the obituaries.

Once upon a time, I followed the official rules of the psychotherapy playbook: always an arm’s-length therapeutic relationship between clinician and patient. But those rules seem less than ideal for highly personal, maybe even life-or-death interventions.

FYI, Gods of Psychotherapy: There are no protocols for patient communication when a therapist disappears from the field. Why should I not expect updates? How to disconnect from my own profound care and appreciation for a beloved doctor who reaches out, lifts me up, cheers me on, brings me to task, reinforces the best of me? Oh, you all-knowing Gods! How could you overlook this sort of dilemma?

Call me (im)patient, call me game changer. I was reasonably compliant; now, I am hopeless and helpless. I have to know.

I text Dr. Fielding’s mobile:

“Dr. Fielding (or whoever reads this text): Apologies for what may seem like a personal intrusion. I am writing because I care and have been quite concerned about the outcome of Dr. Fielding’s surgery. I have received no updates since speaking with him five days ago. If permissible, please let me know how he is doing post-op, as well as any other details you might choose to share. Many thanks!”

I reread my message, correct a typo. OK, well, that about says it.

Go ahead, I tell myself. Hit Send.

I pause.

Then set my phone aside.

Curled in the corner of the library sofa, I splay my bare legs across the ottoman—mindless relaxation for just a minute or two. A yawn, a stretch of my legs, and then Terror! There are no bones in my left foot—except for the large one going to the big toe.

No bones—just skin and calluses and toenails that desperately need fresh nail polish. I wiggle my toes. But if there are no bones, how do they wiggle? Via ligaments and tendons—attached to what? This doesn’t make sense. I close my eyes and begin to count slowly to 10.

“Relax,” I tell myself.  “Don’t take this too seriously. You’re getting too technical. You. Are. Overthinking.”

I examine my right foot: the same chipped toenail polish; and phalanges—five of them—run ankle to toe like spokes under skin. The bones on my right foot are still there. The bones on my left–definitely not.

“Confirmed,” I mutter. “Well, now. Is this an ongoing process? How long, I wonder, before my feet are fully boneless? What about my hands? Then my tibias, my fibulas, my spine, my neck, my os innominatum—will they atomize into nothingness too?”

It occurs to me that my boneless left foot is low-hanging fruit: I am left-handed, so left-footed. Used the most, easy to get to, first to go. Makes perfect sense. Does it? I reassure myself: “Be serious. How could you physically sit, walk, or even cuddle with the cat if this bonelessness becomes pervasive? It won’t continue. Or will it?”

My inner Girl Scout voice speaks: Be Prepared. Accept the evidence.

All right—so what bones will disappear next?  And after the bones…? I wonder but a moment, then confront the truth:

I. Am. Vanishing.

So that’s why I am having to yell so much louder just to be heard. That’s why, when I walk down the street, no one notices that I pass by. Don’t I matter? Does anyone care?

This is it—the physical commencement of invisibility. Atomic particle reduction to unseeable minutiae. No blood, no guts, no hair, no recognition.

Nothing lingers.

Nothing left of me for anyone to miss.

Nonexistence: the ideal rationale for not caring.

Invisibility: nothingness.

No leftovers. No dust unto dust. No matter.

No bones about it.

Old Stranger: Poems

by Joan Larkin

Poem after poem, Old Stranger unearths moments that shape a woman's life. The poet's eye is unflinching as she sees the past folded into the present. Her body is the ground of deep soul hunger. Her language is music.

“To discover the ‘old stranger’ is a knife, not quite, it’s an old piano. No, it’s a book about mortality and the debt of flesh, about love, rot, relationship, smiles that cut like knives through every seeing moment. It’s about painting. It’s a beaut. There’s so much masterpiece here. I mean, wow, this is why one is a poet all their life. To make this.” — Eileen Myles, author of a "Working Life"   “Joan Larkin’s much-awaited Old Stranger: Poems is a miracle of compression, mystery, and innuendo. Here is a poet for whom craft is an extension of wisdom. Whether revealing the archetype secreted within an object, or the elemental, persistent grief within a memory, Larkin expertly hones the edges of poems like a luthier shapes a violin.” — Diane Seuss, author of Modern Poetry   "Engaging with curiosity and often startled affection, this poet tells of how it feels to be both enamored and shaken with what connections reveal. Quiet and absorbed, one reads this most graceful of books until pow and one is alerted!" — Jody Stewart, author of This Momentary World: Selected Poems

    More about Joan Larkin: www.alicejamesbooks.org/bookstore/old-stranger Available from Alice James Books, Bookshop, and Amazon.

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