MIRISSA D. PRICE - POEMS

​The doctor said she would live in a nursing home, confined to a wheelchair, crippled by pain. That was thirteen years ago. Instead, Mirissa D. Price is a 2019 DMD candidate at Harvard School of Dental Medicine, spreading pain-free smiles, writing through her nights, and, once again, walking through her days.  As a Huffington Post blogger and emerging writer, Mirissa has publications in Yellow Chair Review, The Ekphrastic Review, Tuck Magazine, and more. Follow Mirissa’s writing at https://mirissaprice.wordpress.com/.

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                                        Fondling a Lie
 
But here’s the truth:
I wonder if he feels the same insignificance. Being just
a number among so many. Rapists. I wonder
if he feels as
obsolete. His crime doesn’t matter. His
strength doesn’t matter. His power is nothing more
than the other guy’s. Tagged with a metal clip
around his collar, I wonder
how many victims it took to get his two-week chip. And how many
stories he’s told to cover the truth.
 
I’ve told four.
 
Pretending I know what it’s like to not feel a knife, to not
hold a penis, to not live a lie. Pretending I even could tell you
a bleeding semblance of the truth.
And yet, I keep on pretending. I keep on
just standing. In the dark center of Cheesman Park. I keep
climbing back. Into the blue-grey sheets
where he raped my mind. I keep going back down
for more.
 
Like a good victim won’t tell you – I never stop
fondling a lie.  
 
 
 
                                 Today, I Tell Myself
 

Today I tell myself
I will not hunt Pokémon like I am
searching for terrorists
in every dark alleyway and open
park.  I will not
lose sight of
the blossoming greenery
in every news article I read.  I will not
give in to this state
of mindless strolling through violence
merely to capture
a Doduo
alongside a gunman and bomb.  Though it’s hard,
I’ll admit, to stop tapping and flicking
at a virtual reality
when the world is just less
augmented without fiction, and less
playful without games, when all I want is
to go back
to the days when I traded cards at the lunch table
and didn’t know the word ‘terror,’ to
the days when I thought of black and blue
as a Luxray and not
a conflict.  Of cops against man, and man against
racism.  My parents say
they don’t get
how a group of twenty-somethings could really
lose themselves
to Pikachu and Poké Balls.  But I look to
the Germans and French.  And the Brazilians and
my neighbors.  I look to
the elections and authorities, the
vigils and violence.  And in my
free-to-play reality, I get it.  The drive to gather
power for a team of Valor or Instinct or
to get lost in the gym of Mystic.  I get it.  The
search for stardust and candies
to replace bombs in a battle.  And in my hands, I feel it: my Avatar
is always safe in the game.  
 
 
 
                      I stopped watching the news
 

​
because every time I sat down
with a pen and paper
and a cup of Earl Gray
I wanted to tell a story
about dreams
and hope.  I wanted
to paint a page
cheerful, in rhymes set to
iambic pentameter.  I wanted
to do more
 
and write more
 
and feel more
 
than terror.  I wanted
to know more
than grief.  So I stopped
 
writing
and I stopped reading the papers or
watching the news – as though not seeing
the violence meant
it didn’t exist, as though
the chaos was all just imagined.
 
And for a second, the noise –
the sound of a heart that stopped beating, and
the cry of a street stained in blood –
ceased.  For a second, not
a gunshot went off
nor a protester shouted.  For a second
I didn’t notice
that the American flag outside my window
had been at
half mast for half a month, or that
the news hadn’t actually changed
except for the time, and the place
of the story, except
for the names and the faces
of the people who died.
 
For a second of peace,
I had to make it all stop.