WHEN I GOT THE IDEA TO WRITE THIS POEM/STORY, I knew I must write it immediately. Here it is.
A woman, I'd say, who was never happy, fought to get me for her therapist, back at Bristol Bensalem.
In the third grade she was happy. She knew she was a Lesbian and in love with
her teacher. Certainty in a house of Chaos.
Her father would visit her in the night. Afterward, Sheila would turn to one of her many books and read
to comfort herself.
She was so alone. How I tried to set her up with other people. To have her tend the garden at the back of
our facility. Nothing worked. Nothing, I tell you nothing.
Brain-damaged since she was in her thirties, she had driven on the Turnpike, too slowly, and a bastard
crashed into her, melting the soft tender places in her sensitive brain. How I loved that woman!
She had two sons, D** and So***, who told me of her death. We all met in Jersey with Lanie, her dear
friend, celebate all of them.
I don't quite remember why a very bad man attended - possibly the unwelcome patriarch - but there I
was watching with wide horrified eyes. A manic-depressive like myself, she would order dozens of
plaid shirts and comfortable shoes like my mother wore, as her body got larger and larger and what was
probably cancer finally took over.
In her memory, I pretend to drink Coke.
One of Sheila's sons' condos in New Jersey.
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