Three-Hundred Fifty-Seven.
When my mom brought you home
from the rehabilitation center late that July
I remember you struggling to walk from the car to the front door
the way I had once struggled to walk from your arms to my grandmother’s.
Your chest heaved with uncertainty,
and I realized that the person who had raised me
from the day I could inhale earth’s breath
had begun to stumble over words like a child learning to speak
and suddenly the earth’s breath was not enough for you.
Oxygen tubes were paths weaved through the house,
up and down staircases, from the living room to the kitchen,
they were longer than the ropes we once used for double-dutch during recess
and even though they eventually led to you
it was a labyrinth I had been terrified to follow;
it was nothing like the concrete sidewalks
that had once been a straight path to your embrace.
You used to drown yourself in alcohol
before the right side of your body began its silent protest
so seeing you unable to navigate your surroundings
wasn’t a foreign concept to me,
but there was something more jarring
about the way your brain’s regression
made my mother’s name slip from your lips when you saw me,
there was something about the fact that memories of me
were dissipating into the atmosphere that made it harder to breathe.
 I found myself wanting to take you back to the park,
the one beside my school that you used to take me to every day.
I wanted to breathe life back into those faded pictures
of you pushing me on the swing,
of me sitting on your lap with vanilla ice cream dripping down my chin,
of my mom in the background with a disapproving look
because she thought the last thing I needed in my system was sugar,
of you smiling because I was happy.
But there were no parks where we were now,
no avenues for us to walk as you held my hand.
There were hospital visits, and physical therapists
whose hands I had to shake, whose papers I had to sign,
whose names I never remembered.
 I had, however, begun to memorize medications
at the same speed at which you were forgetting our names,
I had begun to grow from the ground up
while you began to fall from the sky down.
I watched the person who had secured my roots in this earth
wither away before my eyes no matter how much I watered you,
no matter how much sunlight I shone in your direction, you were dying.
 So I stopped crying, because it did not help you grow,
and because I thought if I could be strong
I could help you stand upright for just a little while longer.
I thought that I could give you the strength you once gave me,
the breath you once lent me, the life you’ve always hoped for me.
 But at the end of the day I see you there with stammered inhales and exhales
and I find myself grasping at the air for something that might have made it easier
and I find myself choking.Â
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