Amy Jomantas
Outside My Window — 2014
This is a winter best observed from
inside out, where water vapor crystallizes
and swirls—a billion unique, white fingerprints
fall upon our trees and lawn.
Inside, the osseous tissue of your pelvis
struggles to join hands again—
linking mineral to mineral,
a suspension bridge for flesh.
The ortho man has given you the latest metal
screws to bind what shattered
on a group home floor.
When we venture out, heaps of icy, white
crust, layered with care, night and day,
must be shoveled to reveal the walk.
Even so, your wheelchair struggles,
a balky mule bucking over bumps,
until I point the wheels diagonal to the sky
and skim you over such hurdles.
The surgeon hands us a paper
copy of the grayish X-ray blobs
and I see within my brother—
glimpses of new bone,
both dazzling and tooth-white.
June days will come before
you will walk again and drowsy
cottonwood fluff will sift
through air, covering the
grass with seeds like snow.
Amy Jomantas lives and works in Dayton, Ohio writing grants and poetry. Her younger brother
inspired this poem after he shattered his pelvis in a fall at his group home. He is recovering at home with her.
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