Eighteen

by James Fleet Underwood

I turn eighteen in my sleep at midnight
after working the dinner shift washing dishes
at the local club. It’s below freezing outside my window,
the stars like sirens nobody has heard yet.

It’s still dark on my birthday when I call the ambulance
for my mom having a heart attack sitting on the sofa.
My hands smell like dish soap and Marlboros.

Her breasts lie flat across her chest like cakes unrisen
in the kitchen that you’d put aside later to try and
figure out what to do with when they wheel her past in the
emergency room zapping her chest with the defibrillator.

Eighteen when I tell my grandmother her daughter’s died
and ride with her that summer holding her hand
in my uncle’s truck to bury the box of ashes
and pieces of bone bouncing like a toy
from someone else’s game into her confused lap.
​
Every day is my birthday. I shoot a man in the woods
from a window in the room where I never wake,
the house around me clenching in fear and rage
like a child’s fist around a tiny figurine. I’m eighteen.

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James Fleet Underwood is a poet and teacher living in Asia. His work explores grief, dislocation, and the quiet violence of memory.