Hannah

Laura Sobbott Ross

 

I’d heard about you before you became

my daughter’s friend at the Christian school.

You were once the girl, buoyant and uncombed,

with just a can of soup at the lunch table

and no way to open it, a name on a list

of a family asking for Christmas presents,

a wicked chant honed to the jump rope’s beat.

I snickered at your clever nicknames for the pious,

the cartoon of our pastor blah-blah-blahing,

and yet, I’d wanted to complain to the same ones 

about your influence on my daughter. 

The two of you flipping your plaid bible skirts

at the adolescent boys playing soccer; a creed 

shivering down the spine of their spiral notebooks,

the corners of their pages licked damp with turning;

hearts and flowers sketched in the margins of yours.

The last time I saw you, you’d thrown yourself

fully clothed into a swimming pool amid 

indignant snowbirds in a hotel downtown

and were led away dripping, a raspy sea siren.

You’d had babies early, lost them in a ruling,

wandered cowlicked, inked, and dimpled

down the highway toward Daytona

where you died, a stripper living in a van.

The final photo you posted was of a manakin 

in white fishnets and a wolf mask, a macabre

piece of art meant to affront what terrified you. 

At least that was the last thing you wrote.

A red jellyfish scribbled where the heart would be,

skirted in a current of smarting veins. 

A third eye vortexed in onyx

across the flat plane of the plastic belly. 

I wish I could have told you that

sometimes, Hannah, if we are just a body, 

not somebody, just a body, maybe it doesn’t hurt 

so much. That giddy smile of yours studded

in hard spangles, the lobes of your ears opened

wide as the well of a spoon. I wish I could have

taken you in, Hannah, pushed you skyward

on the tire swing in our cul-de-sac, filled your 

pockets with all the things girls should have— 

birthstone charms and candy karmas and lullabies.

I wish I could have fanned that hard spark in you 

into something more than what would consume 

you. Your skin, a span of moonlight.

Stars lashing themselves against the metal room

of your van. Earth’s infinite spin, warm and 

quaking the palm fronds like a loose spirit.

 

photo credit: Harry Rajchgot, 04-2020