THE CURE was published in Cathy’s first book, The Love That Ended Yesterday in Texas, which won the Texas Tech University Press First Book Award (now called the Walt McDonald Award) and was published by TTUP in 1992. This book was reprinted as a trade paperback in 1997, and is available.

Long after I thought
I had done with grieving
there arose in my chest
between the sternum and clavicle
a soft commotion, like the gerbils
caged in my niece's room
that race all night across the furious wheel.
It would start when I least expected—
in the theater during credits
or among the squash and spinach
of the produce aisle. My breath
would catch, my hand flutter to that spot
the way a mother's hand
rises instinctively to her child's brow
as if touch itself could bring the fever down.

Anxiety attacks, my doctor said,
scribbling in hieroglyphics his perfect cure.
I took the pills, and sure enough
the palpitations stopped, packed up and moved
like a band evicted from the premises.
But I found I missed
that little tuning up of cymbals and drums
the way I still missed you
and threw the pills away.

© Cathy Smith Bowers, 1992, 1997.