Haibun for fish out of water      

Or maybe the opposite of fear isn’t courage, but curiosity.

Needle in lung pops the balloon. Latex fingers turn urgent and blunt. I remember this from labor—how quickly one goes from being a coddled customer to a bag of parts they need to keep alive. Pinned to my side, eyes to the wall, I beg an unseen nurse to keep her hand on me and stroke my hair (she can’t; they need her).

Beep! Beep! Oxygen shoots up my nostrils, life-river, as lung sack sags beneath my blood-smeared ribs. Sticky lung tight space no breath clenched fist across my heart races to pump something something it’s not finding anywhere. I can’t breathe! I gasp, ask if I’m dying and don’t get a word. Just more rushing hands and stab of chest tube slithered under flesh sans anesthesia.

Soft fist across my heart racing, racing to the trout I caught in Bozeman, its shocked glass eye and flip-flop spasms thumping all along the bottom of our boat.

                                    oh, so this is what
a fish feels when we pull him
out of the water

driving back from my oncologist, who just told

us the cancer may be gone

you slam the Subaru into the rail it bounces back toward highway traffic stopped stone-dead you me our daughter bound now to these rubbernecks who missed the hit was he going 100 silver-hot flash on the passenger side velociraptor screeching toward the kill he clips the blonde’s car first then punts ours into the pitch-black pickup bang all sides and somewhere I’m screaming behind glass fling myself onto the carseat so my belt flies off slam back and forth but don’t let our girl go just press my flesh to carseat edge so hard black plastic brands it pink she murmurs oh in awe you try to right the wheel and smash the pickup tires screech metal locks we drag together across three lanes rubber paints the road in burnt-black snakes you plow the car into the rail my pinkie’s sliced ceiling drips seltzer Bunny Luv hits the dash flung forward floppy ears akimbo and I remember doctors are not gods