Guilty

by Vicki Iorio


The doctor says my daughter’s curved spine is pressing
on her heart

the way she pressed on mine when she was inside me.
10 years-old, sitting on the crinkly examination table
she looks at me like this is my fault.

I always blame everything on her father’s family.
The spear side—his sickly father, his crazy mother.

We don’t have scoliosis in our family,
my mother says when I tell her the diagnosis.

Until her bones fuse
my daughter wears a brace all through high school that
cages her like Scout in her Halloween ham costume.

My daughter’s doctor carries a Chanel bag
I promise my daughter I will buy her one
when her years of treatment are done, as if I can afford this luxury.

Bones fused, college bound with her Chanel bag,
I make a planter of the cage
to memorialize the curve.

At Kleinfeld’s while my daughter is being fitted for her wedding gown
Olga, the scary Russian seamstress, her mouth full of pins,
tells me my daughter is crooked.

My daughter, fairy tale princess in crystals and peau de soie
breaks my heart.


* * * * *

Vicki Iorio is the author of the poetry collections Poems from the Dirty Couch (Local Gems Press), Not Sorry (Alien Buddha Press), and the chapbooks Send Me a Letter (dancinggirlpress) and Something Fishy (Finishing Line Press). Her poetry has appeared in numerous print and on-line journals including The Painted Bride Quarterly, Rattle, poets respond online, The Fem Lit Magazine, and The American Journal of Poetry. Vicki is currently living in Florida, but her heart is in New York.