I Remember


Darkness surrounded me
gasping for each breath
I could hear the hum of the window fan,
connected to this life
only by Mama's hand.

In the darkness was a voice.
A voice which followed me afterwards
in my dreams for many years
waking me up to cold sweats
heart beating wildly,
trying to get him out of my head.

In this void, caught between life and death,
his menacing idiom I could not understand.
Somewhere in-between heaven and earth,
I know whom I met.

It was the dog days of summer - yet I was shivering
when Daddy wrapped my ten-year-old body in a blanket,
to shield me from the summer rain
headed for the old downtown clinic.

Double pneumonia.
I never could spell it in the
"Please excuse Margaret from school, she had neumonia,"
notes which Mama would sign,
lungs scarred this wasn't the last time.

Penicillin, fever broke,
I could see my room again
as sunlight shown through the window.
Soup, crackers, Coca-Cola,
I walked my dirt-street barefoot again.

The warm southern sun shinned on me
as I played in the back yard, my imaginary jungle,
climbing the mulberry tree and eating purple grapes from the vine.
I remember being alive.


© Margaret C. Rigsby,  all rights reserved.