
Overview
by April Salzano
The year you left my father died, our
dog was put down, our son was
diagnosed Autistic. Our home became headquarters
for agency people who came and went like visiting
nurses or FBI agents. I signed and waived
rights disclosures legalities. It was truly an Intervention. Your
head bobbed on its thick stem while you checked
to make sure your socks hid the track marks
between your toes. You were busy that year
diverting hospital meds, stealing pain
relief from the migrainous, the clueless,
the injured. No one needed it
more than you. It was wasted in the Sharps
container, down the sink; it was justified
and validated and signed for.
Once you were gone I sterilized myself
against the risk of future diagnoses and county services.
I carried our Autistic son like broken luggage
through our house while you slept it off.
I was done. In
the year you stayed, I had a miscarriage
before you had the affair during your trip
to London to detox and finish
your novel, after I made you have a Vasectomy.
Sometimes foresight too is 20/20. But somehow I managed
to ignore the minefield of evidence that you had gone
so much further than any England.
* * * * * * * *
April Salzano teaches college writing in Pennsylvania and is working on her first several collections of poetry and an autobiographical novel on raising a child with autism. Her work has appeared in Poetry Salzburg, Pyrokinection, Convergence, Ascent Aspirations, The Rainbow Rose, The Camel Saloon, The Applicant, The Mindful Word, Napalm and Novocain, Jellyfish Whispers, The South Townsville Micro Poetry Journal, The Weekender Magazine, Deadsnakes, Winemop, Daily Love, WIZ, Visceral Uterus and is forthcoming in Inclement, Poetry Quarterly, Decompression, Work to a Calm, and Windmills.