A Poem by Jolie Smith
A Year Later, I Get a Diagnosis
For the first two months of the year
I can’t stop going to urgent care.
I am doubled over, my face is pale
and the short hours of the day roll onto each other.
There’s a fat fly in the car. I don’t know how it survived
this winter. A few days later I pack everything
I like into my old car and drive through Texas
one day before the snowstorm kills 210 people.
I sleep in Phoenix where Gene sits in a recliner
and tells me that climate change doesn’t exist
and “girls” like me shouldn’t drive out West.
He calls his cousin in California, tries to get me a job
at a grocery store. I keep driving and land by the Tahoe
which is not yet burnt. Gene still sits
in the recliner chair while I dig coffin-sized holes
and sleep above garlic heads. Later that year
I decide that I miss home. I zig zag through the air
on a jet, land in Chicago and glide through roads
shaped like crescent moons.
I go home but there is nothing here that I like
The years are all packed in storage, my dad says.
They’re frozen solid like the lake used to be
The sun peeks out behind an apartment I don’t own
and the fat flies feast on empty bones everywhere.
I think about going to urgent care
but remember last year when they said
Nothing is wrong with you.
Why am I still here? I ask the dead fly
whose body is still in my car
all the way out West where the land is on fire
and trees are sold for less than it costs to get a diagnosis.
Jolie Smith (she/they) is a writer, sibling, friend, tsunami-footage watcher, mind wanderer, and, once in a while, a psychic. She isn’t great at math (other than algebra) but she can make bird calls using her hands and has generally okay balance. Most of all she loves people and their minds and will spend time vehemently invested in anything you show her--including (but not limited to) books, films, homemade comics, and self-produced music videos.