We Are All In Danger Now and Have A New Everything To Face.

– from Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott


The first time she moved in with us
was after gramps left and she kept
trying to feed everyone,
which mom said was just her way
of mourning, and you said, but gramps isn't dead,
to which mom replied, exactly,
and every night after dinner gram sat in the dining room
talking to herself about how was she supposed to just start over,
and you would turn up the volume on the TV,
but somehow she didn't get that being a teen meant
bearing a heavy load, that with increased responsibility
came an inherent need to unwind,
and she spent that summer
running out the back door
whenever one of us went under,
as if she were trying out for a part in Jaws XIV
in which even suburban backyard swimming pools were no longer safe,
and she kept telling us to stop, stop right now,
you know I can't swim, but you told her not to worry,
you and I were watching each other,
and she said, what if you both get cramps or hit your heads
or pass out from a lack of oxygen,
and I could tell you were thinking
about how at least then we wouldn't have to listen to her
while all we were trying to do was have some fun,
and she wasn't back inside more than fifteen seconds
when we both went under at the exact same time.

But her second stay, just two years later,
she left herself as much as anyone,
that gray cloud appearing in her head,
and she had no appetite, even less to say,
though mumbling every now and then about the pain,
but she kept walking to the five and dime down the street,
kitty corner to the cemetery,
and we figured she was probably stocking shelves
or sampling every penny candy she could find,
until the day you and I and that blond kid
from school, whose name is just a ghost now,
found her sitting on a stool near the window
searching the headstones—like a person in the movies
who's been traveling a long time and she's standing
on the deck of the ocean liner as it puts into port,
her eyes scanning the docks for a familiar face
or a hand, maybe, high against the air
letting her know she's welcome there—
only she had the look of someone lost,
of a girl whose legs were tied and was being pushed
to the edge of a plank, that's when you and I remembered
how she couldn't swim and we finally felt the weight
of knowing there was nothing we could do
to keep her from going under in the end.


A former high school teacher, Lafayette once worked as a PA on a low-budget movie with Amanda Plummer and had the good fortune of playing her dead husband in a scene that was eventually scrapped (which pretty much sums up his career as an actor). He has poetry forthcoming in Foliate Oak, Chantarelle's Notebook, Underground Voices, Mannequin Envy, and FRIGG, among others.