Katy Cooper

Don’t Spend it all in one Place

 

My dad gives me a tile coaster for plates

while thin wisps of starving white wasp women

scamper by on the hospital linoleum floor. 

The depression and eating disorders ward. 

Rainbow tiles carefully placed on the plate,

geometrically shaped, show personal fatherly

effort: “for your new apartment.” 

 

In the same breath, “the stock market

should be going back up.”  Ah yes,

the stock market.  That which money

was steadily accrued then quickly lost. 

That which landed my father in this

florescent ward of endless art therapy,

yoga relaxation and deep breathing galore. 

My father a money whore tried to hurl

himself over the tenuous mahogany banister. 

 

He sits in a plastic chair, I on a window sill. 

His fancy maroon slippers and dull eyes. 

De-thawing, no longer numb and aloof

my father sits in despair. 

My dad gives me twenty dollars for lunch.

“Don’t spend it all in one place”