Lyme by Daniel Lassell

Every ending begins with a field.

\\

Mom stems her fingers
with cigarettes, says the smoke
clears a pathway for her lungs.
Breathing has become
a sport for her. “8 years,” she says
and wipes her face,
adjusts her tubing to undo a kink.
How a tick has pierced my family.
With that bright red ring,
set flames around our farmhouse.

Blood, a whisper of bruises.
My family, for years, thought doing
began with seeing a culprit,
those tiny eyes. And finally,
when the doctors did name the cause,
I rejoiced, oddly,
as if towering wheatgrass
had somehow parted, a doorway from
the suffering temple.

//

No, just another wall—
and outside, the tide creeps near.
In the hospital again, Mom
speaks in an altered voice,
an accent not her own.
Must be the brain. Must be a feasting.
“We must keep her,” the doctors say,
learning again how to
perform the most eloquent
of drugs,
waves moving,
…………………….claiming.

\\

Again, the coats. No food.
Screening
then looking at screens.
See the infection. See it.

It sloshes away, a ravenous
puddle expanding, taking with it
sand, grain, flesh—an ocean
quickly then
another ocean.

//

O what ladder down is the body.
This time, respiratory failure.
“Not the oxygen tank,” Mom says.
“That’s how they hook you.”
Her blankets smell of smoke.
Beyond her window, there’s a fire
unattended.

\\

It doesn’t end, this disease.

When the meds reach
their location, cells fester
and spill through organs,
another round.

Mom gets dizzy from the leaving,
the tick that’s become her.

Does a blood-yoked animal ever
sicken, tune to a pulsing
and wonder
if in blood
it’s not blood,
but where the blood goes?

//

Forlorn. The wicked oars
become anchors.

Daniel Lassell grew up on a llama and alpaca farm in Kentucky. His recent poetry appears in The
Shore, Colorado Review, Slice Magazine, Crab Orchard Review, and Court Green. He lives in Fort Collins,
Colorado.