Lost in the Bardo by Carolynn Kingyens

          For my mother—
          a mystery.

Two years ago
the phone call arrived,
tragic as a gut-punch,
you know —That Call...
that call every estranged
adult-child dreads;
one I could never prepare for
even after being asked
by a Manhattan therapist,
the same therapist
who'd inform me that
my sleeping
inside of a sleeping bag
atop the celery-green
shag carpet floor
in my parents' bedroom,
curled up next to my mother's
bedside like a loyal labrador
was actually something
called enmeshment,
strange behavior that
could be named.

For seven years
my father would treat me
like a perpetually
annoying cockblock,
perhaps my mother's goal
all along.

"Will you go to her funeral?"
he'd ask me in one of our sessions.

My lack of an immediate answer
would later morph
into a hypothetical poem,
a poem about going home
after the dreaded, hypothetical
phone call from the brother,
whom I hadn't seen
in well over a decade,
not because of a lack of love
but rather due to the cringey,
social awkwardness
that existed in all our familial
relationships.

In this hypothetical poem,
I would portray myself
as a total stoic;
didn't cry,
didn't scream
before taking the last
poetic flight
out of LaGuardia.

And when the imaginary plane
circled the Hudson—
the perfect trajectory
to study the river,
also embodied with secrets,
I'd sit and stare
out the oval window
looking down at the watery graves
of those poor souls
dismembered and discarded
like Angel Melendez,
the New York City Club-Kid;
murdered and dumped
in the Hudson by Michael Alig,
who'd later be played
by Macaulay Culkin
in Party Monster.

I digressed.

The first boyfriend
I ever brought home
told me my father's eyes
looked dead
in all his photographs.

In 1997
I read a short story
by Will Self
called "The End
of the Relationship,"
the last story
from his book Grey Area
about an "emotional
Typhoid Mary"
who'd make
all her lovers' eyes
go dead
just like my father's.

Maybe that was who
my mother was,
maybe that's who
I am by extension of her —
an emotional Typhoid Mary,
a F—up folie a deux —
a loyal labrador
lost in the bardo.

Carolynn Kingyens was born and raised in Northeast Philadelphia. She is the author of two poetry collections, Before the Big Bang Makes a Sound and Coupling, both published by Kelsay Books. In addition to poetry, she writes essays, reviews, and short fiction. Two of her short stories were selected for The Best of Fiction List in 2021 and 2023. In the Fall of 2024, two of her essays were republished by YourTango. And her latest review is the tribute book for Larry Robin, who is to Philadelphia as Allen Ginsberg is to Paterson. You can read her latest book review at The Arts Fuse. Carolynn writes on a myriad of topics ranging from pop culture to pop psychology to true crime on Medium: https://medium.com/@ckingyens