Dear Dr. Park, it’s June again

Dear Dr. Park, it’s June again,

this one so wet and cool twilight spills

over the hours like a storm tide over houses,

and I’m half here, watching my son’s

taffy-stretched limbs starfishing

across the bright green lawn gone to clover

and half submerged in a years-ago June,

in the night I was so far under the pain

I forgot how to hate your needles, Dr. Park,

and then I forgot to fear you too,

in the morning when I could feel everything

and begged you for the gift of feeling nothing

(or almost nothing, except the burrowing bass

beat under my skin, the tug and endless,

endless pull of parting, breath by breath)

which you gave me—I had enough nothing

that my arms trembled, empty, same as now,

until my son jumps to help me lift him,

jumps to reach the lanugo-soft petunias

sending out their waves of languid sweetness

for the evening pollinators, sighing

it’s not over yet, the work’s not done

and oh Dr. Park, can you recommend

something to take the edge off time’s routine

procedure, the severing of each moment from

its mother—I want to be awake for this life, I do,

but I can’t surface for every scalpel slice,

I need a dreamy estuary present, because

somehow—I wasn’t ready, but somehow,

it’s June again, dear Dr. Park.