Why We Won’t Be Coming To Visit Thursday

by Sandra Lindow

Because
My husband’s 50 year-old brother Bruce
has moved home with their mom
and because Bruce weighs over 300 pounds;
and the crumbling tinker toys in his spine
backtalk all day in an angry pidgin of pain
because his tolerance for distress
is lower than the mines of Mordor;
and because their neighbor Eileen
knew of a good recipe;
because Bruce never bothers much
about little things like laws;
and because Rena, their little Jewish mother,
has a freezer full of things that may have been there
since the last ice age when people didn't need freezers;
because Rena keeps her chocolate stash there;
and because her memory is more like a sieve than a safe,
when Bruce left his marijuana brownies next to the frozen blintzes,
she thought they were hers and ate a whole one
(though the proper dosage for a heavy-weight,
life-long doper is just a quarter).
Because one hundred seventeen pound Rena
got so remarkably, incoherently stoned
she felt but didn’t see
little green spiders climbing her arms,
she called 911 instead of the Orcan Army.
Because Mike happened to call her
just as the medics were carrying her babbling away;
because no one knew what was wrong with her,
because the doctors were diagnosing a neurological event,
because Bruce went ballistic
when he found one of his brownies missing,
Mike took the six PM flight to O'Hare today
and will be in Skokie ‘til Thursday night
trying to sort through the mess
that seems to have bushwhacked his family.
Love, Your Sister, Sandy