MIRISSA D. PRICE - POEMS

Mirissa D. Price is a 2019 DMD Candidate at Harvard School of Dental Medicine and future pediatric dentist. As a child, doctors told Mirissa that she would live in a nursing home, confined to a wheelchair, crippled by pain. Instead, Mirissa uses her medical experiences to inspire others, living each day with a passion to spread pain-free smiles through her dental work, writing, improv comedy performances, and nonprofit work with children. Her writing fills the pages of Yellow Chair Review, The Huffington Post, Five2One Magazine, and more. You can stay up to date with Mirissa’s writing at mirissaprice.wordpress.com and follow @Mirissa_D_Price on Twitter or Facebook. You can even take home a few inspirations of your own, at Mirissa’s Etsy shop, A Smile Blooms.

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‘Terrified, screaming woman murdered by boyfriend before his suicide in Lakewood’
​

I didn’t know terror could
modify a scream. As though this woman
was always screaming
in joy and in pain, in hope
and in lines at the grocery store. Of course,
she, too, would be screaming
at the time of her murder. But not in
the way a lover screams out ecstasy at the
touch of a hand, or in the way a child
screams out for her mom, lost
in a crowd at the mall.
 
She ran across a busy street,
screaming
before her boyfriend. In terror. Afraid.
On Pepperwood Avenue.
 
I didn’t know screaming could
modify a woman. When we know only
her name. Not her face or her hair color. Not
her job, or if she was a student. When we know
nothing matters. Except she was screaming. Except
she was dead.  
 
A gun modifies terror.
A call for police modifies
a scream.
 
But we still don’t know
how she spent her days. On Monday
through Friday. Or how
she fell in love
with a man on the edge
 
of suicide.
 
I didn’t know tragedy
could end a relationship. Or that blood
was necessary
to modify a murder.
 
The relationship ended. With no reason
except her twenty-six years
summed up in one
scream.
 
She was a woman. He was
Austin McQuade. Found dead in
their home, soaked red in
her exhale.
 
             I didn’t know
             the end of true love is a euphemism for homicide.
              And there never are suspects
             to modify a scream.
 

We Just Stop Singing
​

​Some songs never end;
we just stop
 
singing them           and playing
their melodies in our minds.
 
We just stop feeling
.        I turn the radio up to listen
to a track I never understood. I never liked. Played
the dozenth time, it sounds
alright. Enough to bounce my head. Enough to hear
 
the conversations around me.
How they no longer sound cold, and no longer
sound real.                  They can’t. In this world.
 
‘Only twenty-two injured?’
She asks. Her face is straight.
‘Only one woman died.’
She decides. The song can play
 
without her mourning, too. She’s had
ENOUGH. Watching thousands collide
with a plane     in another dimension, hearing
dozens implode
 
with a bomb. She tunes it out: the single
so monotone     she now nods her head. The terror
surrounding her
so much she’s not afraid
 
Of another girl gone. Or another
life lost. Or another sun set
on this new they call normal.
 
The smoke never does
stop rising from a blaze. But when
the clouds become ash, 
the smoke starts to look plain.
 

When I open a book
​

​I let my eyes fall
where they shouldn’t, wandering
from the top of the page
to the back side of the cover. This is where
we will
find ourselves at the end of
the chapter - cradled in bed, your
thoughts above my chest, your words
wrapped around my hands.
 
I let my thumbs slide
across your empty margins. Careful
to not damage the “I” or the
imagery
of a vast, silken ocean
shadowed by haze, abandoned by cold.
You and I - the only two
looking out.
 
From the height of my pillow
two seagulls take flight. Three immigrants
land. You go on rambling
and I go on
 
listening. I know where we’ll
end. I know
what vibrancy you carry. I know
the size of the line space between your quote
and my thumb. I see
 
your face on the jacket. It’s
more round than I imagined, more tan
than I remembered. It’s not
the same as the voice that read me
to sleep or the mind that
imagined
a midnight sky over Long Island.
 
They list
your name, and your face
in honorable mention – nominee for the national book awards.
Of this ending year. Recognized in
your genre of reprinted truth. But
 
Your name doesn’t matter. Lost to
a story.
 
I open the pages
to the image of you, my protagonist, painted
in simile, reflected in
prose. Unable to distinguish
your laugh from the author’s, your voice
from my thoughts.
 
Tonight, I’m in bed with your exposition, fondling
your footnote. Congratulating
your whisper, as I end
chapter four.