- Vol. 10
- Chapter 11
Upon Losing You After Seventy Years Together
I was your toddler,
Who buried my head in your black mouton coat,
While Daddy drove us to see the Christmas lights
Your skin was soft, with lotion,
As you pressed your face to my cheek,
Blue magic strung on branches, white candles,
Against the dark
Your hat an arch of black feathers and netting
Me in soft pajamas
I was your pin curl experiment,
Criss-cross bobby pins
“Hold her head for me,”
As you aimed high with the scissors,
“It’s so hard to cut her bangs straight.”
My favorite aunt, smiling,
In spite of my wriggling
I was doted over, you could tell,
With sock-curled ponytails
I had the clothes you never had,
you even brought Daddy along,
To help pick out the red oversized coat,
which would grow with me,
Now that’s a good-looking coat.
I swished out wearing it,
Never giving a thought
Upon Losing You After Seventy Years Together
Of what it must have meant to them,
Their absence of coats this warm in youth
I could predict your next word,
Oh, just don’t worry about it,
Let’s don’t think about it,
One day I’ll be gone,
One day you will thank me.
You just think you will live forever.
I dream of you find an opening,
In your early days of passing
And you escape to me,
Where I am hunched against
Your comforter, a marshmallow to my grief
Hold my back in a hug,
Dressed in your 1940s suit,
And lilies of the valley cap
Showing me there is a gap,
A small opening, that white light
You part and climb back,
Through the petals of a flower
Into eternity
Like a tiny fairy angel
My free-winged Mama
My once earth-anchor, among the planets