The Ides of March

Five fifty a.m. and the phone rings. 
“The house burned down,” my brother says. 
Our parents are traveling and I am the big sister.
It’s a long drive through unplowed streets and
I am not prepared for the smashed windows
Burned wood against pristine snow, and
The many ways fire can damage a home.
No one tells you how to heal from this.

Ten years later I am given news.
After the surgery, with cut muscles
Broken ribs, a collapsed lung, chest tubes
My body so laced with pain
I slip in and out of consciousness.
There is a long scar across my back
I promise that I will kill myself
Rather than ever go through this again.
No one tells you how to heal from this.

Ten more years, and I am facing more surgery
But there is no question: I have daughters.
My mother never had the option.
Now ugly red scars cris-cross my body.
Then the day I see my mother’s photos of the fire.
Somehow the destruction of my childhood home
Seems intertwined with destruction of my body
And for the first time, I weep for both.
No one tells you how to heal from this.