Now I know it all.
Now I know I know your heart’s
imperfections: left anterior
descending coronary artery
fifty percent occluded,
right one nearly as bad.
Aorta: distal, mild.
Those petechial hemorrhages
on the small and large intestines,
they can’t hide from me now.
I know about that benign
cortical cyst on your right kidney,
the bilateral pulmonary edema.
The M.E. noted that your body
was “well-developed, well-nourished,
consistent with the recorded age
of 48,” yet your intestine
was digesting itself: autolysis.
He and I, we know
your secrets. Even though I was
no longer your wife, he told me
on the phone precisely how you died,
before the toxicology reports
were in. O secretive one,
now I know exactly how much
your heart weighed.
Published in Chest (journal of the American College of Chest Physicians), 2/2012
After retiring from a column-writing gig lasting eleven years and yielding over 300 personal essays, I find I still have something to say. My thoughts range far and wide, and occasionally deep, on subjects including being an Iowan who misses Colorado; surviving marital violence; raising an amazing daughter and an equally amazing son; being justifiably angry about the world “these days;” writing poetry and plays; wondering if I’ll get Alzheimer’s like my mom and her two brothers; wanting to write about my twin granddaughters without sounding all Hallmark-y; fixing OCD-ish food; making sense of pants that come in shorts / crops / ankle-grazing / bootcut; being a librarian in public, academic, archival, and medical libraries; waiting 46 years to attend my high school reunion; having a gorgeous garden I can’t take care of; seeing a shaman; loving good men despite all the bad ones; and trying to wrest a little joy from life despite an 11-year-and-counting chronic migraine.