The Silence Before the Mourning

Melissa Rechter

My hands shake as I sit in a classroom.
I can’t hold my bottle of water for fear that
I will spill it all over myself.

Why don’t you talk more?

After my sixteenth birthday,
I got a gift I didn’t ask for.
I lost control of my body
as one arm couldn’t lift
farther than the other.

I couldn’t remember
my teacher’s name
to call out for help.

My friend didn’t succeed today.

Screaming old song lyrics out open car windows

as we speed down the back roads, trying to remember

old problems that once seemed so important.

Now they’re so trivial.

Beep.
Beep.
Beep.
Thunk.
Click.
Whirl.

My heartbeat jumps out of my chest
and skyrockets in the cardio range
when all I’m doing is sitting.

Mom lost all her hair today.
I can hear her soft crying from
behind closed doors.

Don’t look at me. Don’t look at me. Don’t look at me.

My other friend doesn’t succeed.

Breathe, breathe, please just keep going.

I’m afraid one day she might.

They created a simulation at my high school today,
showing us what a crash scene would look like.
Little did they know I had been to a scene like this before.
The bruises you get from your seatbelts don’t wipe away
as easily as the makeup on the actors do.

Beep.
Beep.
Beep.

The waiting rooms are places of quiet judgement.
You wonder why the others are in the room
and try not to make eye contact with them.
It’s the silence before the mourning.
The silence before the relief…

The soft padding of a nurse’s shoes
is an all too familiar noise for
a young girl who should be listening
to her favorite songs.

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

The feeling explores your body in a chilly, vise-like grip.
It rushes through you, twisting and turning throughout your body.
Chilling you to your very core until you can’t feel it anymore
and you know then that it has become a part of you.

I inhale, filling my lungs until they’re like a helium balloon.
Then I exhale, crumpling them up like a piece of messed up paper,
until they are useless.

I hate the smell of antiseptic and bubblegum.
The sterilization of the hospital coupled with
being put under the knife
is something any child would get nightmares from.
They give children a scented
anesthesia so that it isn’t as scary.

My father sits on the couch
and stares at the TV with empty eyes.
It’s not on.

I don’t blow out candles when I turn 19.

Quiet in the waiting room.
Trying to keep my mind off the prognosis.
Trying to occupy my thoughts with something
other than the results of the surgery.

My father gives my brother money for a field trip.
He returns with one item, a necklace for me.
His explanation is “I’m the big brother, I have to take care of you one day.”

Safe in a hospital bed, wrapped up in a scratchy blanket
that provides warmth.
A stuffed animal cradled in the crevice of my arm.

The silence before the mourning.
The silence before the wailing.
The silence before the loss.