Branches
for Eric
Previously published in The November 3rd Club Winter 2009
If I knew that those Sunday-school stories I heard would become
a ball of uncertainty rolling around inside me,
if my parents hadn't kicked me out for dating the youth pastor wannabe,
and I hadn't moved in with the married lesbian.
If the married lesbian hadn't decided to divorce her husband
I wouldn't have ended up living in Athens, Georgia where
I would, in the span of a week discover that my boyfriend was
cheating on me, miscarry our baby, and get mugged.
If I hadn't moved in with my ex-boyfriend's mother after that
and then in with a distant cousin in Milledgeville, Georgia
where I would find my perceptions altered by practicing the loss
of time through smoke and mushrooms, multiple partners
and practicing being Good Enough* at karaoke. Or if my drinking buddy
hadn't said that the guy running the karaoke night
was gay, so that I challenged — I would bet her a beer that I could
get him in the sack, and if he hadn't asked for my
number that same night only to tear it up a week later because I turned him
down because I was still only seventeen and wouldn't be
let into the bar where he wanted to take me dancing. And if the drummer
in the band I sang for hadn't done twelve shots of white
lightning the following New Year's and then urinated on me in bed because
he was in diabetic shock, and if I hadn't covered the shift
delivering pizzas for the girl I worked with, and if I hadn't gone
to the party, where the guy that ran karaoke
read poetry, and I sang bad imitations of Janis Joplin-
then I wouldn't have ended up in place of eight month snows,
married ten years to the guy that ran karaoke, and I wouldn't be watching our
two children recreating games of hopeful daisy chains, and
animal clouds. And if we had chosen any other branch?
∗"Good Enough" Sarah McLachlan
