It's #tbt! Enjoy this great one from SWWIM Every Day's archives!
I am not supposed to help the speech therapist tells me as she holds a list of words before my mother, saying, Tell me the opposite of each of these: Short. [Silence] Quiet. [Silence] Dark. My mother turns to me, lookingโ apologetic embarrassed small but I am not supposed to help. Itโs been three weeks since Dad reported from ICU, how she must have fainted, toppled against the tile, a gash and crack in her skull, how one paramedic turned green, had to leave the room to steady himself after seeing the pool of vomit and blood. Now we sit in brain injury rehab, as she works her way back, reaching for words her memory lost, not meaning, the doctors say, just words. Linguists claim the first learned is the last lost. I want to offer words I believe must be lodged in her memory. If I say We like to hop, will she say on top of Pop? If I say Mr. Brown, will she say Upside Down? Can the learning-to-read call and response my mother and I once shared call her back to me? Those were my firsts, not hers, and I cannot know what words she learned in her own motherโs arms. My memory cannot hold hers. And I am not supposed to help, so I smile, thinking ๐๐ข๐ญ๐ญ. ๐๐ฐ๐ถ๐ฅ. ๐๐ช๐จ๐ฉ๐ต. The answer is ๐๐ช๐จ๐ฉ๐ต.
Darby Lyons is a retired high school English teacher living in Cincinnati. She received her MFA from the Sewanee School of Letters, and her work has appeared in Rogue Agent, Mud Season Review, Barren Magazine, and other publications. She reads poetry submissions for The Cincinnati Review, serves on the board of Women Writing for (a) Change, and reads news and poetry for Cincinnati Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired's broadcast reading service.
4/10 / Meet the Artist with visiting poet-in-residence Tyler Mills / The Library at The Betsy-South Beach, Miami Beach, FL / Live and Live-Streamed on Instagram Live/Facebook Live at @swwimmiami / 6:00 pm EST / Free
4/10 / Poetry Reading with visiting poet-in-residence Tyler Mills + local writer Jennifer Litt / The Library at The Betsy-South Beach, Miami Beach, FL / Live and Live-Streamed on Instagram Live/Facebook Live at @swwimmiami / 7:30 pm EST / Free
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Wow. What a beautiful poem. Thank you Darby. Thank you SWWIM.