Phlebotomist

We had a joke in our family—well, not really a joke.
When climbing into the station wagon, you would cry, 
“Not in! Not in!” My father, that mad phlebotomist,
had a habit of driving off without checking to see

if there was a full complement of blood—meaning kids,
meaning wife. His anger like the band the nurse ties 
around your arm to find a vein and stick you cleanly. 
Once, my mother fell and hit her head on the parking 

lot macadam—-my father kept accelerating. The door 
to the car like a flap of skin on a patient’s abdomen 
in the OR. (The wind, turning to its junior colleague, 
said, “You close today.”) As a kid, all I ever wanted 

was out. Yet I’d be sure to be in that car long before 
my father said we’d leave, especially if I had a backpack 
or tennis rackets. I always feared being left behind. 
I can still see my mother with her Safeway bag 

and purse and badly scraped knees. “You bastard! 
Not in! Not in!” Now that she and so many others are 
gone, I think that life, too, is a father who accelerates, 
wanting everyone in the ground.

Ralph James Savarese | Incorrigible
Contents | Mudlark No. 82 (2025)