Mike

    I remember the way you pulled into the parking lot
of the health services building just minutes after I called.

How Dooley called you and asked you to make sure I was okay,
and how I wasn't just then and you just knew.
    How Dooley drove,
me in the back seat, tall rows of corn
rising on either side of the car,
straight for mile after mile towards the moon and then a right,
and I had to lean over and crane my neck to watch it,
and then another right
and the moon was at my back
      and I had calmed down.

And how you walked up to my room to get my medication
so that I wouldn't have to explain to my roomates why I was leaving.
How it was sunny outside and I listened to music in the car and ate a banana
and took deep breaths.        In the hours before this I walked into class
and sat down
and opened a book that I couldn't read because my eyes wouldn't focus
or my hands wouldn't stop shaking,

I remember walking around the health services building
hiding from employees parking their cars outside and then walking inside,
waiting for my eyes to clear, for the last of the tears on my cheeks to dry,
                and I asked if I could make an appointment and the lady asked if it was
urgent and I couldn't think of anything to say.

When you showed up,
I cried into your baggy sweatshirt that Dad gave you and
you hugged me
until I could lift myself into our truck and unclench my jaw,
       
    I remember the soothing feel of the questions you asked me
on the way home as I stared out the window at the flat, mid-Michigan cornfields
and the rows of trees
and the pastoral country highway.  I remember thanking the fields and
the trees and God and all of the red barns
falling to pieces in the winter afternoon
          that you were there.