CPR Training

The nurse had hair the color of a healing
bruise and arms hard from pressing
plastic breastbones. On real people,
when you do this, you should hear a
crack, she told us. Break the ribs.
You have to do that to be effective.

I sit and strain to remember if I heard
you crack then, nine years ago when
we found you and breathed between
your lips, the color of a healing bruise,
our arms hard, but were they hard enough?

CPR rules change every year, the nurse says,
as we learn what works. It’s still only
ten percent effective.

Was there a crack somewhere between
my hands and your heart?
or did I fear to hurt you
to heal you? That part I don’t remember.

The next part of CPR training is imagined.
I imagine it every two years: The nurse asks us
to raise our hand if we have ever performed CPR.
Only I raise a hand. What was the situation? The nurse asks.

Thirty compressions, two breaths.
My friend and I trade off.
I wonder at the immediate intimacy
between mouths of strangers when oxygen
is at stake. Was there a crack?

Suicide, I reply to the nurse. The class always gasps. I say it
as if they are all priests, lifting hands and breathing
breaths to absolve me. It’s okay to confess something
even if it’s not exactly a sin, right, Father?

I sit and strain again to remember if I heard
you crack then, nine years ago when
we found you hanging from your own rafter
and we breathed between your lips
and pressed your chest.
They told us we got your heart beating again,
but you didn’t last for long. Your final beats pulsed
under the rhythm of our palms. Our palms, were they enough?
I never heard a crack, but then, there was a lot of noise nearby.
Your husband and son moved away soon after.

The nurse’s terseness aches. I cannot say all I want to say.
So I cradle the mannequin again, push its chest,
the foamy, quick puff of its boneless, heartless,
answerless silence.

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