I was in a rocking chair.

I remember feeling that if everyone

really understood the worth of life, they wouldn’t —

I remember feeling that it was incomprehensible

far away impossible, that most men held a key and just turned it.

that every war was wrong

every knife every gun every blunt object potential weapon

I put a call out in my mind.

I put my mind to it.

I remember the green rocking chair

propped up with six pillows,

the window to outside.

I remember pillowing myself —

I was sitting in the rocking chair.

on the bed on the couch on the bed, crying hard

television light bright on my tear-slick face, calling my mom on the phone

“Watch some TV, just do what you need to do to get through”

milk milk so much milk

and by 7pm no more milk.

I remember, and when people ask

“How did you do it?!” I say

I don’t remember.

Sometimes, I could only hold one of them.

twenty minutes apart, in the bright light of the operating room

at 3:39 and 4 in the morning, I felt the circle of my life connect.

A birth party.

A baby shower,

A blink.

I remember gamely trying to stand up

surprise! blood spilling out onto the floor

I told the nurse take them away

if they stayed in my room, I would never sleep again.

I’m awake now.

They keep me awake.

In the first morning, I smiled into the warm orange-pink light

from a window that’s no longer there.

I remember thinking

We made it.