zillie

the world was clean and cold,
ripe with the scent of sanitized linoleum
and the hopeless old.
the nursing home squatted, its own wobbly ecosystem,
its brick legs tucked indian-style
under the neat rows of white gardenias.
round wrinkled faces sat propped
limply in wheelchairs like debilitated rag dolls;
blank, nameless, empty.
"maria, mi querida,"
wails senora guerra,
always sweating, always plump-faced,
always cheered.
"yes," i say,
says ten-year-old-me with the conditional identity.
(for i am not maria and i am nobody's querida.)

"sun-day," my grandmother announces blandly,
obediently,
but there is no recognition in her eyes.
she is twenty-three, unmarried, beautiful.
i am Ruslana, the dark-eyed banker's wife.
"yes," i say,
says ten-year-old-me with the conditional identity.
(but i am not Ruslana and i am not Czechoslovakian.)

these grey walls are her israel.
the symphonic whir of the air conditioning is the throaty laughter
of the commanders on the naval ships at bay.
it is nineteen forty-one and Aunt Frances is having a baby.

"zillie, zillie, zillie," charlie moans, his eyes wide with,
haunted with, twenty years of ghosts.
for twenty years zillah has slammed that door on that
four-door camaro,
on the crumpled faces of charlie and those two
snaggle-toothed children.
he drowns always,
his ears swishing with that liquid
slam, slam, slam.

slam. this is what it is to have lived.
his eyes dilate. i fear he is more alive than anyone.
more alive than i am.
"i'm not zillie," i whisper,
and i shrink inside myself.