outside looking for dead meat
when inside I lose my balance 
while putting away my fifteen-
pound dumbbells, slamming
my shoulder against the glass
hutch, then twirl like a tempest,

and bounce off the step
where I just did my aerobics
and land on my left shoulder,
arm and hip on the hardwood
floor, which feels like a pillow,
and holler for my husband
who is in the kitchen listening 
to the screeching scavengers.

Feeling no pain, I sit up and try
to get to my feet but my eighty-
year-old joints are melded like
melted metal. The doorbell
ringer my mother-in-law used
to summon my husband when
she was dying at ninety-eight
sits on the nightstand, several
feet from my trigger finger.

I think of my eighty-seven-
year-old mother lying
in her closet with a broken
leg and her fingers drumming
on the linoleum until the tenant
below calls paramedics but she dies
anyway. I scream until it scares
away the buzzards and he finds
me in the corner crawling 
on my hands and knees
towards safety and survival.
                        

because he has had lots of practice
wheeling his parents around 
before they succumbed to old age.
Like them, I am an unwilling passenger.
Keep your feet up, he says.

I try maneuvering the wheelchair
around on doctor’s orders.
It’ll build up your shoulders and arms
so you won’t have to lift weights.
But our house is like an obstacle course
and steering the wobbly wheelchair
was harder than it looked, and I fear
bumping my injured knees.

With my husband steering the ship,
we speed past the dining room table
he made with cactus wood
and pine with his own two hands.
The couch and loveseat we purchased
at the small furniture store
on Apache Trail in the junction
as soon as he put the doors
on the home he built out of clay
with the assistance of a carpenter
who carried the logs on his shoulders
and hoisted them to the ceiling.

Hold in your elbows, he commands
as we fly through the tight threshold
to the master bedroom – bigger 
than some apartments – making a sharp turn
and through another threshold 
to the master bath
where the jetted tub sits empty.
Wish I could take a soak, I say.
Maybe I could rent a forklift
to deposit you inside, he says
with a straight face. I do not laugh.
Bring me the walker, I say.