To my practice patient, an Italian grandfather

Congratulations. Today is your day. Your life has been for this. I am the center of all, and today is our meeting today is your everything. When you were born you didn't know June 14th 2014 was your everything. You thought it was a day -- March 3rd 1076 or May 5th 2026. When 78 years ago you kicked your way out feet first into Sienna, I made sure a midwife got you safely from... No! You were the one from Florence. Yes, near the Arno, your mother, expecting, wasn't expecting you so soon. Apologies, I needed your first baby breaths to be outdoors. (I visited your birthplace last summer, and laughed to see a pretty bride smiling where once was your placenta.) I made your mother's stories teach you adventure. When you holidayed to Pisa, Rome, Tangiers, did you know you would return to Florence to know your streets but not to find home? I put that emptiness in your bones. That was me. I was on the road, those roads, far at the end a far off cul-de-sac, reclining on a bamboo chair and calling those bones, the heart collecting the blood of alone. I am the breath. I am the sound in your ear. Whispering "America." I made America your land because I whispered to Crevecoeur; I fondu-ed his lies. As the breeze playing the flute, I also whispered paternity through the Italians: I made your father love you; I made you care for you and yours. And I made your country seem worn, the home of tired stones, where the years had stretched the brick, the earth and the air so existence seeped from everything like water through an old skin. And I made it that way. I made your Italy thin. Else you wouldn't have taken that boat by the way, I arranged (through the captain, whose daughter I made marry a lousy welding man so he'd understand your need.) And I made you step into a new land smiling, what matter if it slipped as you became a bad Italian accent, And lost your voice? You gripped your Italian, but language is butter and leaked from your fist. Your tongue was scrapped by Uncle Sam's thigh, and I didn't let you more. I led you, I lost you, then I gave you despair. I made you sick with cancer of the bladder to irradiate you, poison you, make you feel for nothing. So you could lose no more. You had home, I took it.  You longed for home, there is none. You were here, you were mine. I took your hope.I dropped you low. Your masculinity prodded and examined until none remained, and in impotence, I let you stay. I made you stay because I needed you. In Jersey you would crouch and lay brick, building with the other tongued Italians, hundreds of walls each a prayer for a home (breath strips in the reek of despair). I made you find a family and drop a work ethic on them strong enough to drop to the next because I needed your children good. I needed your son's wife. I needed her schizophrenic. I needed your grandson shy, and to be overwhelmed by me: compassion. I didn't need him successful. I didn't need him smart, I needed him in there. In class, with me, doing because I needed you. I needed you to be my patient for a practice EMT exam. I needed you to lay down and be tied into positions, to have your throat checked, to auscultate your chest. I needed you to be a good patient so I could pass. Yes, today was your day. Your life was for this. I am the center of all, and today was our meeting today was your everything. I don't need you anymore. on your way out, you'll slam the door, and I won't know you again.