The Men: Chapter 4 (& 5) ~ 2000

“The only thing I remember about being with Tony was that he changed positions constantly.”

“Rick was bisexual and sometimes that was hard to handle because I’m not used to competing with men.”

“I just don’t get it—I just don’t get it. I feel like I’m constantly being tested. I feel like I’m going to scream—give me a break, God. Give me a break. And then I found out Martin’s coming over tonight.”

— K. E. Hanson

Lying in lingerie,
as you often do in the middle
of the day, you work on The Men
chapter of your autobiography, drafting
in your head, trying to decide how many
can you include, how steamy
should you go. Even leaving out
a few dozen,
sometimes you aren’t sure you’ll be able
to fit the men you’ve loved
in one chapter.

They drift in and out like lifeboats,
docking at your heart,
roping round your body,
then cutting loose after a few
months, most unable to sustain
attachment through the tidal wave
surging through your life.

With names spanning the alphabet,
and life stories as varied,
the man in your life gives you
energy when you’re down,
someone to look forward to,
phone calls, shared meals,
and warm nights
when your hands can explore
the length and depth of his body,
massage head to toe
face, arms, hands, chest, legs, feet,
express through your fingers
and lips
the joy you feel
in seeing
him,
blindness disappearing in darkness
as you take in with touch
features and contours
of another.

Most float out of your life one night
to the next, but a few stay through passion
and pain to weather a relationship.
Kevin, seven years younger
still living with his parents,
stays over one night with his guitar
and doesn’t leave till two years later.
Zack, a biker with serpent tattoos, loves you
with a steely tenderness,
seeing you through the turmoil
of two amputations and a stroke,
without breaking open
his own heart.

Yet best for last, comes Martin.
Your cab driver
as you depart from a three-month stint
at Sunset Convalescent, the two of you bond
over Buddhism, he a lifelong student,
you a Christian learning Buddhism
in the everyday challenge of living
in your body, letting go of who you were
and wanted to be, every day a giving up
and getting up.

Twenty years your senior,
Martin calls you his “girl,”
introduces you to Chai,
reads to you on Saturday afternoons,
and even when he gets a “lady friend” in his life,
remains a phone call away day or night,
to reassure you that this body
is only a suitcase
for your soul,
waiting to be
unpacked.

Cherishing you like no other,
to the end he takes you to Pleasure Point,
a spot where you used to surf,
still your favorite place in the world.
Sitting on a bench overlooking the ocean,
air thick with seagulls, sea spray, sea scent,
he describes the shade that day,
cobalt blue, dark turquoise, jade green,
and together you gaze out at the surfers,
lying on their boards, waiting
and waiting for the right wave,
then all at once paddling, crouching,
and finally, braced and balanced in the wind,
standing at last.

Friends for Life ~ 1988

“I believe in people. I may not understand why the heck they do what they do, but I believe in them.” — K. E. Hanson

The first time I see you, I determine
I do not want
to know
you.

Outside of a summer school class,
before the first session, you stand
secure in a swarm
of fellow students, they taking turns questioning,
“What’s your guide dog’s name?”
“Can I pet him?”
“How old is he?”

You answer warmly, sometimes laughing loud
and long, head thrown back with the confidence
of someone who knows
people will wait,
want more.

You are wearing a black leather miniskirt,
a crimson low-cut top, a black
shiny belt, and cherry red
pumps. At your side, your guide dog Danny,
a black lab, sits obediently.
Later you will tell me
that you always wear
at least one black
accessory, not just because black
“never goes out of style”
but also because wearing black
keeps you and Danny always
color coordinated.

Like moths at a light,
students keep surrounding
while I steadfastly step
inside the classroom,
burying myself in a book, putting you,
too bold and brash,
out of my mind.

Corner of my eye
minutes later,
I see your guide dog
leading you,
one trusting high-heeled step at a time,
straight to my side,
and I watch you touch
for the chair next to me,
feeling your way into my life,
bringing the brightest smile
I’ve ever seen,
a sunray spread surrendering me,
as I hear you ask,
“Is this seat taken?”

Seeing Straight ~ 1997

“I think I am the only one on the planet who asked Santa for a pair of bluer eyes and longer legs and actually got them.” — K. E. Hanson

“Are my eyes straight?”
you ask, turning to look
at me, trusting
and expectant.

In the sunlight, I can see the fine blonde hair
on the side of your face, the deep v-indent
in the center of your upper lip,
the long lashes, curled and darkened,
lining your blue
eyes. Without boundaries
of eye contact,
I gaze into your face
as into no other.

“I think your left
is upside down.”

When I met you I did not
know, as others don’t,
your eyes are glass,
hand-painted striations so delicate and beautiful,
their surface reflects light
like a blue dawn.

Turning to slip
your eye out, you chuckle.
“I was just thinking about that time
with the study group.”
I am laughing,
too.

You were prepping for a final
when another student in the group
made you laugh,
hard.
No warning,
your right eye flew
out of its socket
to
you-had-no-idea-where.

You heard a few chokes
then silence
until you asked, “Has anyone happened
to see my eye?”

Your face fills
with mirth as you think
of this moment
and the laughter
that followed,
no veil of shame,
seeing straight
to humor, a lens you keep always
in your sight.

Come Dance With Me ~ 1994

“Over twenty-five operations and losing my sight, this scares me most. I keep touching it. I can’t believe it will be gone tomorrow. I keep telling myself God must have a plan.” — K. E. Hanson

Night before surgery, you tell me you’re scared,
really scared. Through six years’
friendship and more hospital admits
than I can count, I’ve never heard
you say this.

In the Christmas photo you sent
this year, you frolic
with your guide dog on the beach.
Clad in a white tank top and rolled-up jeans,
you stand balanced
in the surf, knees bent, back arched,
arm poised to throw
a stick. Your honey-colored hair streams
in the wind, water rushes round toned,
tanned calves. Below the photo, your words,
“Lover of life, come dance with me.”

Days after surgery, you’re bantering
already, asking your nurse,
“Could you check with the doctors
A-SAP
to see if hair is going to grow
out of my stump
and when I can shave
it?”

Below the knee, your right leg
gone, thick cover of bandages crisscrossing
the amputation site.
Intense pain
comes and goes.
You swear
you’re going to dance
again. Soon.
In your red pumps.

You have to settle
for black boots.
Against doctors’ wishes,
you’re dancing months
later, a benefit you’ve organized.
Doctors warn: injure remaining ankle,
may lose that foot, too,
skin so slow to heal,
steroid-brittle bones
caving in.

But tonight,
swaying to Kenny Loggins
in your boyfriend’s arms,
prosthetic leg barely noticeable beneath
black lace stockings,
pain of the last months
hidden in your laughter,
you draw all eyes in the room,
dancing lightly, naturally, blissfully,
as if you always will.

Bird of Paradise ~ 2001

“There is no ugly flower on earth. They are all beautiful, and they know to look to the sun for their light.” — K. E. Hanson

I wheel you into the sunny courtyard, a fusion
of bromeliads, ferns, palms. A dozen doors look
into the courtyard, yet I’ve never seen anyone
emerge. Residents lie wilted
in their beds.

Angling your wheelchair to maximize sun
and sitting on a bench nearby, I remember
many times I’ve sat with you as you sunbathed,
your skin, soaked
in lavender lotion, bronzing in the heat.
Stretched out bikini-clad,
you would tell me about your latest
love. Corey. Todd. Max. Names changed
often, your excitement
never did. We are quiet
now.

Planted in this nursing home, an unwilling
transplant, you know well what's
ahead: TV (Animal Planet or Jeopardy),
dinner hour (corned beef or turkey), sleeping pill
(one—or two if you get lucky). Your roommate
no longer speaks. Next door,
a woman in her nineties wails
for her mother, long since dead.

Yet at this moment,
past and future melting,
you lift
your face to the sun, brilliant
smile unfolding,
simply absorbing,
drinking warmth,
finding the nutrients
in the earth of your life.

Beginning at the End ~ 1984

“I’m the most desperate, lonely woman you will ever meet in your life, and I am blind. There is nothing more lonely than blind desperate loneliness. And I want them to feel it. I want them to know my loneliness.” — K. E. Hanson

In the book you always hoped
to write, your life began with “The End,”
the day you lost your sight,
surgery meant to cure.

Those first weeks, you ignored doctors’
gloom and waited, expecting
any day for your sight
to return, to see again the red
roller coaster near your favorite surfing spot,
the pine green specks
in your boyfriend’s light brown eyes,
the charcoal you were using in your last sketch,
you now will never finish.

But the first time you are left
alone in the darkness you will see
for the rest of your life,
you feel a loneliness so profound, isolation
that nothing twenty-eight years
of sunlight and starlight
have prepared you for.
You feel buried alive,
trapped and terrified, alone and aware
as you will be until the day you die
that the world as you loved it
continuing around you
is gone to you forever.

Frantic at the thought of living
your life through, you stumble
around your mother’s home,
groping for the switches,
turning on every light you can find
with each flip praying
this will be the one.
Again and again, you will your eyes to see
even one glimmer.

When you knock over a china lamp,
which breaks apart at your feet,
you begin to cry, tears that tumble
down your cheeks for days,
and you crumble to the floor, screaming
to God, the questions you will ask
again and again, “Why? Why have you
done this? Why have you kept me
half dead?”

Last Resort ~ 1990s

“Blind disabled woman needs roommate. Low rent in exchange for personal assistance.” — K. E. Hanson

You live alone for many years, fiercely holding
onto your independence, redefining
what is feasible. Chili,
for example. You refuse to stop
making chili. Your party specialty.
Slowly chopping vegetables,
carrots, peppers, onions, tomatoes, garlic
carefully positioning the knife, slice by slice
checking the placement of your fingers
before each cut, then gradually pressing down.
Over twenty ingredients,
chopping, stirring, tasting,
you’re at the stove hour after hour,
seeking sublime.

I have learned over the years not to lend
a hand—not to find your clothes, not to fasten
your prosthetic legs, not to check your glucose.
Having seen you snip
at others who offer,
I know you will ask for help
as a last resort.
You are striving to keep yourself
the kind of woman who always leaves home
with her guide dog fed
and her nails done.

But after a stroke,
you have to start living with the man
off the street, anyone who responds
to your ad. “Blind disabled woman needs . . .
Some stay months, others
a few weeks. One man steals
your heart, another your life savings,
$273 cash from your boa constrictor’s
aquarium. “He must have really needed it,”
you conclude, not angry, “if he had to
look in there.” Then comes the woman who loves
boats. “You mean she loves to sail?”
“No,” you explain, “I mean she loves boats.
Romantically. Works with them, chills
with them, sleeps with them. She’s a fetishist.
She’s nice, you know. I just say, whatever
floats your boat.”

Your fingers less sensitive, mind less sharp,
you have had to learn to trust,
even when you shouldn’t, to accept
what many wouldn’t. Still you fight
for self-sufficiency, often crying, yelling
in frustration, searching for missing lipstick,
wallet, insulin, cardigan, band-aid, lotion, leg
the objects in your life
rarely where you left them
in your mind.

Sometimes, sitting with you over a Diet
Dr. Pepper, watching you reach
and reach and reach
for the can, grasping
only air, I can’t stand
not to
and I slip my hand
across the table, sliding the can
a few inches forward,
far enough still
for you to find.