How To Identify a Body
In your kitchen, we find three long deep shelves filled
with dozens of jars of dill pickles, and in your
freezer a half dozen bricks of weed wrapped in cling
wrap and tied with string.
I think of standing next to you at that counter, a bowl
of flour and butter in front of us as you tried
vainly to show me how you make perfect pie crust
every time. You were also beside me in
my kitchen, both of us stoned and silly long before
it was legal, you grinning as I explained
my theory about BLTs as we made bread, mayo
and bacon sandwiches.
In your bathroom, I reach for your toothbrush and
can’t touch it, because I see you holding
the headshots a director had asked you to get and
murmur sadly “I’m all teeth…”
bemoaning your own wide bright smile. I leave
the toothbrush on the counter and go out
to your desk, where I find and begin packing your
journals, stopping once in a while to
read the entries you wrote as letters to me, and one
you wrote to your old friend, telling her
that I was “the one who always took care” of you.
I think how the letters to me were rehearsals
for calls to me you actually made, delivering to me
your rehearsed lines and monologues, and I
wish the lines about taking care had been rehearsed
for me instead of for her, giving me the cue
to speak the lines I should have, the lines that would
have been taking care of you, even if I’d
only been able to deliver them
in a stage whisper…
don’t go back don’t go back
don’t go back
to him
Judith Mikesch McKenzie
Judith Mikesch-McKenzie is a teacher, writer, actor, and producer living in the Pacific Northwest. She has traveled widely but is always drawn to the Rocky Mountains as one place that feeds her soul. Writing is her home. She has recently placed/published in two short-story contests, and her poems have been published or are upcoming in Calyx, Her Words, Plainsongs Magazine, Cirque, Wild Roof Journal, Clackamas Literary Review, and over 40 others. She is a wee bit of an Irish curmudgeon, but her friends seem to like that about her.
