Ally Malinenko- Three Poems

Membership

I’m not sure how it even started.

I had one button, then two.

Then a third that someone gave me,

a few I picked up at museums,

overseas,

until the collection grew

and now the whole front of my bag

that I carry on my five mile walk to work

is covered in buttons.

Who is that?

they ask on the subway

Oscar Wilde

I say

or

Fuck Hate,

that’s a good one.

Nice buttons, they tell me.

But today the radiation technician

came out while I was waiting

for the doctor.

I’ve got another button

for your collection

she said

and opened her hand.

The little pink ribbon

stared back at me.

I took it with trembling hands

as the old folks

around me nodded

and smiled

now indoctrinated

into a club

I never

wanted to be

a part of.

Black Star

Somewhere outside our solar system

in the dark the Voyager

is still playing the Beatles.

But here on this couch

I see the words in my head for awhile

before I say them out loud.

I settle on hollow.

I think about a silo

but instead say that I feel

trapped at the bottom of a very deep well

separated from everyone

and everything I have ever known.

Forever alone.

He tells me he could understand killing if it really came down to it.

There are stars in our sky that look like one

but are really two burning suns,

dancing around each other

a binary orbit

just one and one.

But there are also stars

that seem to dance around nothing

locked into orbit

around a black hole,

a nothingness

slowly spiraling down

tendrils of themselves

pulled loose

in this suicidal ballet

and I think

that is me

now

locked around

this disease.

Alone

and slowly coming undone.

Radiation Day 26

Today is Anna’s last day.

She and I sit alone in the waiting room

after I’ve turned down the blaring television.

I in my gown

and she in her clothes.

A line drawn,

a world of difference.

You’re finished today? I ask

Yeah, she nods, my last day.

That’s great, I say, Congrats.

You?

10 more, I tell her

though saying it now it seems

too few

and still too many

as if I have lived a year of my life

here, in the chairs of this sad waiting room

and yet I’m not ready to be done.

Not ready for what done means.

I want to tell her she’s going to be fine

but Maria comes in

and sees Anna

and cries

Oh baby, we’re going to miss you so much

this place won’t be the same without you

They hug and I realize that’s all it takes

to love someone,

to be shoved in a room

scared shitless

of death,

with individual containers

of apple juice

and graham crackers.