#MIDDLEBURY
How I Almost Died in Peru
Patricia Colleen Murphy
The mounting list of things I needed but
could not get. I tried to put on a sweater
but I was too small. The ceiling was too big.
The water wouldn’t stay where I swallowed it.
I stepped into a bath that was hotter
than expected, which quickly became
colder than expected. I brought a cherry
to my lips, bitter as a piece of grass.
The air was so thin that after several steps
everything pixilated like a cartoon bomb.
Then I saw mother’s nails
drumming the countertop.
Then I saw her tightening the knot.
About this poem
“In the winter of 2010 my partner and I traveled to Peru to hike the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu, but first we stayed two nights in Cusco at 11,000 feet to acclimatize for the trek. The night before we were supposed to leave on the three-day hike, I got the worst food poisoning of my life, and between the vomiting and the elevation, I was disoriented and terrified. As I was so sick and stuck abroad and so unsure of what would happen next, it brought to mind my mother’s mental illness, her many suicide attempts, her loneliness and helplessness in hotel rooms all over the world as she traveled alone and suffered through psychotic episodes.” – Patricia Colleen Murphy
About Patricia Colleen Murphy
Patricia Colleen Murphy is the author of “Hemming Flames” (Utah State University Press, 2016). She teaches at Arizona State University and lives in Phoenix.
The Academy of American Poets is a nonprofit, mission-driven organization, whose aim is to make poetry available to a wider audience. Email The Academy at poem-a-day@poets.org.
(c) 2016 Patricia Colleen Murphy. Originally published in Poem-a-Day, www.poets.org. Distributed by King Features Syndicate.
