by Laura Read

which means most of the time no one knows
how much Marie is with me,

inside my right leg in particular,
behind the knee. After a while of standing,

it throbs and I have to shift
my weight and it is difficult for me to listen

to what someone wants from me
because I am in standing in my garden in Brooklyn

with a pair of scissors to trim the white rosebush
my apron splattered with sauce.

I called her Nanny, but her name was Marie.
I can’t say I don’t mind having her blood

running through her varicose veins
but if someone has to, I’m glad it is me.

I don’t garden, but I do make her sauce
and yesterday I accidentally bought four boxes

of lemon cake mix at Trader Joe’s
because I like to serve it in the summers

with berries but then I remembered there was only
me and my husband to serve it to now that the kids

are gone, and that’s a lot of cake.
I thought of Marie’s roses blooming

for no one and her sauce uselessly simmering.
Marie came to this country on a ship

called the Giuseppe Verdi
on December 17, 1920. She was nine.

I don’t know about you, but I like knowing this.
It adds a certain glamour to me sitting here

in these thigh-high compression hose
that I have to wear for three days

after my first round of sclerotherapy
like a cast, the doctor said, so on the third day

I stink like Sylvia’s Esther
who wore her green dirndl skirt and white blouse

that she borrowed from Betsy for three weeks straight.
The hose has grown a little

damp, and my legs are now things
I lug around, lifting them in and out of bed,

you know like all of history, like my poor Nanny
who lived before sclerotherapy,

with her husband Frank who was what they call
no good, drinking in the garage, throwing

plates, ripping the phone from the wall.
Google says sclerotherapy is a relatively

painless procedure for most people,
and I’d like to meet these most people

because I had to bite my knuckle each
of the twenty times the doctor shot

the medicine into my veins, which burns
as it travels, and still

I cried out, which then I had to apologize for,
and the doctor, whose name is Megan,

offering me a side of therapy,
said, It’s okay to cry out when I’m hurting you,

and I said, thank you, and she said,
It’s so cool, watching the medicine move through the vein.

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Laura Read is the author of But She Is Also Jane, Dresses from the Old Country, Instructions for My Mother’s Funeral, and The Chewbacca on Hollywood Boulevard Reminds Me of You. She teaches at Spokane Falls Community College and in the MFA program at Eastern Washington University.