Disquieting Muses At the Grocery Store

( This was written 14 days after my sister's murder )

Disquieting Muses at the Grocery Store

If I rest, if I think inward, I go mad—Sylvia Plath

       Nowadays, my prayers go something  like this:

      “Help me! Help me! Help Me! Pleeeease Jesus, Help Me!”

       Sometimes I scream the words out like a lunatic. Sometimes I sob out the slippery

syllables like a lonely, lost child. Sometimes I just wander around mumbling the words

inside my head.

      Silently. Ceaselessly. Ridiculously.  

      I find it remarkable that one can hide insanity so easily, so simply, so wholly. I’ve

discovered that one can wear a mask of feathers, bright red lipstick, glued on smiles, and

fit in perfectly; that one can walk up and down the grocery isle as if she were normal, as

if she were like everybody else, as if she mattered a damn in this crazy world.

    Does anybody care?  If so, how can they laugh, talk about insignificant

nothingness, and go on living when my sister is dead?

    I pretend I’m shopping. My legs move. My arms sway. I nod at a neighbor without

making eye contact. I stroll up and down each isle of perfectly strait soup cans, cereal

boxes, and whole chickens. I lift a red tomato to my nostrils inhaling its ripeness, it’s skin

is cool against my nose. I squeeze the avocadoes. I stare at the glazed donuts,  strawberry

pies, corn on the cob.

    But nothing is alluring, appetizing.

Things I once savored and sinned over are dull, colorless, muted.

The cashier smiles. She runs my items through her register casually, mindlessly.  It’s

just another day for her, I'm just another customer to her.

She has no idea I’m dying inside.

    “Nice out there,” she says. “How’s your summer going’?”

     I pause.

    Um, lets see, my sister was murdered exactly eight weeks ago by her so-called-

husband. I saw the mustard yellow tape wrapped around the house to prove it. There were

swirling red lights and some reporter was clicking a camera and laughing like a fucking

moron. Yes,  it really happened. I still can’t believe it, but the son-of-a-bitch killed her.

    I was in the family waiting room when the doctor came in. I can’t remember what he

looked like, but I imagine the Angel of Death is equivalent.

   “She’s brain dead,”  he said. 

    How dare him utter those black fanged words like that, those life changing vowels like

that.

    Abruptly. Without warning.  Without sitting us all down with hot tea, wine, verses,

  meditation, poetry, grandma blankets, something else.  I despised him for not preparing me

for my own death, too. 

    He said we could go see you, go observe your body stretched out on some hideous

stainless steel table. I jumped up and down like a wild woman. I screamed. I swore. I

kicked somebody’s desk. I don’t remember the rest.

     I smell your perfume as soon as I enter the room intertwined with chemicals, rubbing alcohol, my own pain.

   I walk over to you, touch your cheek ever so softly, skim my fingers over your newly

waxed eyebrows,  your freshly highlighted hair.

   “Oh, god, I love you,” I whisper. 

    You feel cold, like marble, like ice, like you’re already rising, but I still smell your

perfume. I still see the stain of crimson on your lips, the yellow rubber band holding your

pony tail.

    I sense the cashier gazing at me, through me.

    I don’t say anything. I can’t. I just smile with my red lipsticked mouth. That’s all. I

pick up my bags of groceries and walk out the door.