Car Doors

The large side door on my minivan
is white steel.  It’s made to remove fingers
but not with the precision of a scalpel.

Its blunt edge is made to crush.  The tip gone,
not enough tissue recovered.  At the knuckle, blood vessels
too narrow to reattach.  Bone splintered at the base.

It’s too heavy to close from inside.  And outside,
only David is strong enough, opening wider
then leaning his 10-year-old weight as he pulls.

I usually close it for them, standing like a hotel
doorman while they climb in dragging
backpacks, piano music, ballet bags.  Fighting

over who sits next to the door.  I look at their fingers
clutching homework, and I see them bleeding
on the van floor.  David’s long musician fingers.

Allie’s and Samantha’s curved gracefully as if in dance.
James’s still holding a football
or paintbrush.  Luke’s baby fingers gone.

I see them learning to play piano with a prosthesis.
Slipping an engagement ring over a nailless stump.
Shaking hands at a job interview left-handed.

I hear them screaming.  The screams of birth,
exit from the tight safety of the womb into cruel
light.  Where mother is just another careless stranger.

So I take the heavy door, warning
everyone back.  Hold the cold handle tightly.
Swing it shut.
 

Copyright 1999, Carol A. Losi

Carol Losi is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame and the University of Houston. She has published one book for children, The 512 Ants on Sullivan Street.  The mother of five children, 10 years and under she studies in the UW Extension Advanced Poetry Workshop.