The Return

The date is circled on my calendar.

My mother's handwriting. Thanksgiving.

Three weeks away and I'm already

learning to rehearse the part of her daughter

who isn't falling apart at the table.

She called twice about the menu, the timing,

what I'm bringing. But what she meant:

are you coming? Is he coming? Can you just

pretend this year that everything is fine?

And I will. Because that's the conspiracy—

we sit at that table and we agree:

the things that break us stay beneath

the words, the jokes, the forced

laughter that means please don't ask,

don't look too closely, don't

make this harder than it already is.

My father will not look at anyone.

My mother will laugh at things

that aren't funny. I will smile

while something in my chest

keeps collapsing, and we will pass

the potatoes like we're passing

the weight of everything we can't say.

In three weeks, I have to sit there

and make fine mean a thousand things.

I have to make it mean I'm not drowning.

I have to make it mean I'm okay.

I have to make it mean: please

don't look too closely at what I'm hiding.

The circled date is like a trap door

I can see from here. I keep staring at it.

I keep thinking about not going.

But I will go. I always go.

Because that's what we do—we sit in the lie

together, we eat, we pass the unnamed thing,

and we call it love, we call it family.

I don't think I can do it this year.

I don't think I can fake it.

But in three weeks, I'll be there,

already learning the new ways to be silent,

already practicing the smile,

already making the unsaid things

louder than anything I could say.

My mother's handwriting on the calendar.

The date circled. Three weeks.

I am already rehearsing how to disappear.