I Fall to Pieces

We're singing “I Fall to Pieces,” Lee at the piano

harmonizing with me on the chorus, 

and what happens to my heart in that moment

as I watch him belt out You want me to act 

like we've never kissed for all he's worth, 

his lashes squeezed tight, so light

they seem silver, his throat open

and unguarded, his naked voice mingled with mine,

is written only in a book whose pages 

are never turned by human hands, 

whose print appears as radiant ions.

I'm staked to the melody, 

while he twists over and under those notes

we know so well having practiced them 

a million times, and we're doing it, we're going

to pieces together, not like Patsy Cline, 

whose magnificent alto was silenced forever in the woods

where the small plane to her next gig crashed, 

but like two old fools

helplessly besotted with each other, and the words

I'd go to Hell for that man arise inside me unbidden, 

and scare me half to death because I know

they're true and I know what they mean—

I've witnessed the wife of the man with Parkinson's 

feed him oatmeal, interpret his grunts and moans,

when no one else can understand

what keeps her tied there 

letting her own life gutter in his sputtering flame.

I've listened to the parents who dragged their kid to rehab

over and over, until it stuck, though they had to take out

a second mortgage on their house.

And I've already gone to hell for him 

in small ways of course, like he's done for me,  

through depressions and dry spells 

and bad bosses and illness, but it's the walk 

through the valley of the shadow 

I'm talking about here, though in truth 

I can't imagine it, I just know if he dies 

before me, I'll follow 

the sweet echo of this moment

to the underworld like Orpheus

and the whole way down I'll be singing our song.

---

ALISON LUTERMAN's four books of poems include The Largest Possible Life; See How We Almost Fly; Desire Zoo; and In the Time of Great Fires. She has published poems in The New York Times Magazine, The Sun Magazine, Prairie Schooner, Nimrod, Rattle, The Atlanta Review, Main Street rag, and many other journals and anthologies.  Two of her poems are included in Billy Collins' Poetry 180 project at the Library of Congress.  Five of her personal essays have been collected in the e-book Feral City, published at www.shebooks.net and available on audible.com. She has also written half a dozen plays, including several musicals. She has taught and/or been poet-in-residence at California Poets in the Schools, New College in San Francisco, Holy Names College in Oakland, The Writing Salon in Berkeley, at Esalen and Omega Institutes, at the Great Mother and New Father Conference, and at various writing retreats, workshops and conferences all over the country.  Check out her website www.alisonluterman.net for more information. 

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