Macaulay Glynn: Trying to Escape My Body
Photo: Joanna C. Valente
Safe
Have you ever noticed how “Therapist” is spelled
“The Rapist,” Theresa asks, grinning, while she moves
a red crayon idly over the edges of a paper flower.
Elizabeth is on so many benzos
she nods off over the common room table.
We all make jokes about the ping-pong ball being
a privilege, we must be trusted not to try to swallow it.
At fifteen, I was in the hospital twice
before I learned to stop trying to escape my body.
I met Samantha, the first girl I had to force myself
to stop staring at, not completely understanding why
her fuchsia hair, the way she walked
made my palms sweat.
Another patient told me Kiki, thirteen,
6’1 and two hundred fifteen pounds,
has been here for six months
after pushing her pregnant mother down the stairs.
We spend all day journaling with markers
and shuffling to group therapy
in sweatpants without drawstrings
and we laugh often, make each other cards,
fight for an extra two minutes
at the single phone outside the nurse’s station
Sandy laid prostrate in the road
after her mother found her in bed with her stepbrother
I try to imagine how the asphalt must have felt on her back,
as the night shift nurse, the nice one, makes her rounds
a car’s headlights are approaching,
no, just the hourly flashlight,
keeping us safe.
Supermarket
What I miss the most
about being in a long-term relationship
isn’t the regular sex or the road trips
not the parties with friends nor the movie dates
but the grocery shopping.
Lover, I long for nothing more than the mundane
ritual, the time spent in aisles,
the planning of meals and lists and budgets
the warm routine of comfort food, or
your apprehension at my constant desire
to master some kind of dish involving spaghetti squash
a vegetable you have deemed worth my abandoning.
Baby, tonight I want to celebrate your favorite brand
of peanut butter. After three years together
our positions are predictable—
I prefer to be the one to push the cart. I like
when you place your hand over mine
on the handle, reach past me to place bread in my basket,
remember sugar for your grapefruit
and add it to the list.
Once in a while, darting out
for something forgotten,
we still come together at the checkout lane,
you, breathless, holding flowers.
Macaulay Glynn is pursuing a Ph.D. in English Rhetoric and Creative Writing at Binghamton University. She is the former director of the Literati reading series, and the former director of the Binghamton Poetry Project, an ongoing community-based workshop program through the Binghamton Center for Writers.
