break-ups don’t always make me think about dying
but they always make me think about dying alone
40 years later / undiscovered by neighbors
until they can hear my cats screaming
‘we’re out of meat, meow, no more mommy meat’

several hours and 9 days after I got the courage to run away
I canceled an ex’s ticket to our planned vacay
to Myrtle Beach — but I went anyway
for a run on the beach around sunset
and in a whimsical seize-the-day moment
I closed my eyes and ran blindly, arms wide open
trusting the ground below me and when I opened
my eyes I was looking directly across the Atlantic Ocean

I felt myself running to another version of myself,
who in turn was running on the beach directly across the ocean from me
my racemic enantiomer, along the same latitude
my mirror image racing to me from so far away
but sure as shit I could hear her:

‘bring it in, bring it in,’ I heard her say (I realize she wants to hold me)
‘breathe,’ I heard her say (didn’t realize I’d been holding it)

a glorious exhale emptied my lungs
and my soul-sister huffed CPR across the ocean
one single continuous breath along 34 degrees north

looked it up later — the city directly across the ocean from Myrtle Beach
(found out it’s Casablanca)

I heard her whispered words making ocean sounds
felt her cheek against mine: ‘I know, I know
there, there, I’m here, I’m here
pull it together, girl, your hemisphere needs you’

yet someday my hemisphere will stop needing me
and when they do, who will be at my side?

some of my proudest moments in medicine
could be interpreted in retrospect
as unconscious self-centered good karma coins
in my creepy Kevorkian bank
(back then I had so much to fear)

as a trainee I would incur senior residents’ wrath
when a patient of mine wanted to choose where they died
and the unit social worker, burned out to a crisp, was nowhere to be found
I would eschew tasks for my still-kickin’ patients to make it happen for the almost-dead
get them to heaven by moving earth if I had to

got a critically ill Dominican on a plane once
one-way ticket to Santo Domingo so he could die where he lived
I could not speak to him with my limited Spanish

so to express my fondness for him I told him he was ‘como un gatito’
because I knew the Spanish word for kitten

later, a cancer-ridden meat-sack named Severin
old grizzled Navy veteran with no one left
no friends, no family, almost no time
he’d scream at nurses, physical therapists, specialists to leave him alone

all I did was listen
so I got to stay

but the price of admission was feeling his sadness as I left
evaporated like hand sanitizer as I walked out his door
every time

80-hour work-weeks and I remember visiting him on my day off
bringing him a lemon ice because it reminded him of being a kid
1920s Brooklyn
and tasted sweeter than nothing-by-mouth
(what the nurses didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him)

it took a shit-ton of phone calls but
I got him to a hospice where he could go outside a few times before he died
(senior resident shakes his head again)

this last break-up, as my mind rolls to my dying alone
I saw myself at Severin’s Sunday bedside
and thought ‘maybe when it’s my time, I’ll have someone there like me’

then thought ‘oh yes, she will be very much like me’

let’s say there was no prince charming
just Cinderella, rising from ashes
to ashes, dust to dust
sand melts down to glass and makes a mirror
(no one has the other shoe except her own damn self
holding up a looking glass slipper from Casablanca)

nevermind my kid’s question (‘how does a shoe that fits perfectly fall off a foot’),
what I want to know is:
how does she dance with shoes made of glass
without slicing her soles to butchered feet meat

(the soul is protected / nothing to fear)

glass slippers are crafted from sand before it melts into reflective surface
that’s why the ocean is my ballroom
I dance on diamonds like shoeless joe’s trajectory from first base
to home

score

all the single ladies with diamonds at their feet but none on their fingers:
nothing to fear anymore

my Casablanca cousin will step in like I did for Severin
whisk me away on a staycation from myself
whisper to me as I follow the light:
here’s lookin’ at you, kid

and we’ll take care of your cats, don’t you worry

nothing to fear anymore

By Lindsay-Rose Dunstan, Detroit, Michigan – United States of America

About the Author

Lindsay-Rose Dunstan, MD, MPH (she/they) is a freelance writer, prison/police abolitionist, and anti-carceral psychiatrist catering to those with neurodivergent conditions and marginalized identities. Her work has been published in leftist and mental health journals, poetry anthologies, and Slate Magazine. She is the author of Growth Anatomy: An Atlas on Self-Love, available through Intersectional Press. She lives in Detroit.

Feature photo by MEUM MARE

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