What I Can Still Hear

I can still hear Somewhere Over the Rainbow.

Someone sang it when I was young

but now I can’t remember who.

I can hear tires screeching

as I chased a pop fly

down the middle of the road

before that car crashed

into my tom-boy body.

And then, while I sat in my bed recovering,

with bruises all over my face,

the neighbor boy strolled past,

so I called out the window, “Hi, Jimmy”.

I can still hear him screaming all the way home

“A monster! A monster!”

I can hear Bethel cursing my name

when Jack and I popped out of the rumble seat

after she and her fiancé

had driven out to the woods

for some alone time.

Actually, I can’t. I’m overwhelmed

by the sound of childish laughing.

I can hear “Don’t tell Mummy!

Don’t tell Mummy!” Rudy standing over my chest

while I lay flat on my back on the pitcher’s mound

with a baseball imprint on my forehead.

I had thought I would be the nice sister,

give him an easy pitch.

I can still hear those rascal boys squealing in terror

after Grandma dropped a sheet over her head

and went and knocked on the clubhouse door

crooning “Woooo,”

holding a butcher’s knife.

I still hear my cough,

horrible and persistent,

the dry kind that tears apart your throat.

That was when I went to the hospital.

There, they asked me about all those ear infections.

I can still hear my mother in our one bedroom,

“We just can’t afford the doctor, Sweetheart,”

but at the hospital she had to say,

“Go ahead with the surgery, sir.”

I can hear myself screaming FUCK YOU

and my fist thudding against his cheek

after the doctor scribbled what had happened.

Although, I guess that was really

the first thing I could not hear.