Anti-Elegy
- Aug 12, 2022
- 1 min read
by Mollie O’Leary
Dad almost died before mom decided to divorce him, the clot clogged somewhere in the calf, an incomplete passage to the heart. She prepared his syringes as he lay bedridden, her hands precise, barely leaving a bruise, knowing already the force required for a body to bend, to buckle. She was an understudy to all things breakable; her marriage an apprenticeship in shatter, in fracture. His almost-death only weeks before she slipped in the kitchen, hamstring cleaved cleanly from bone. Her body immobile, she became tethered to a life she meant to flee years ago. Her helplessness clarified his cruelty: he demanded dinners, smashed the good plates, pushed the crutches out of reach to watch her hobble, crawl — she left on a weekday in their thirtieth year together, stopping his heart. She did what the clot could not.
Mollie O’Leary is a poet from Massachusetts. She holds an MFA in poetry from the University of Washington, Seattle. Her work has appeared in Frontier Poetry, Poetry Online, DIALOGIST, and elsewhere. She reads for GASHER journal. Find more of her writing at mollieoleary.com.
