when I left your bedside, where are they? Your sleep went on.
We killed your old cat, as ordered. We put your ashes in a can
on a shelf. We sealed the glass, after breaking the seal. After
putting a picture of you, happy, on the shelf, mixing the cat ash
with your dust, changing your mother’s frame. Together again,
mother and child. You said she almost died having you, wouldn’t
give you up, shouldn’t have had you. How precious you were
to her, a woman who died with a stack of paperback romances
tied up with twine, a yellowed glass apple, bowls with tuliped rims
in impossible autumn shades. You grew up with those bowls,
watched her make double, triple batches of brownies, cake, pickles.
Arms muscled from lifting wet laundry to the line, before
that was all gone, all those days of labor. And you, who she taught
to lift what you’d never carry, you snuck cigarettes at ten, lipstick,
then cars. No license, that was always the fun of it. You were game.
You wouldn’t get caught, and if you did, what of it? You were golden,
you’d been dipped in the motherlove, a caul of self-sacrifice, getting
what you never gave. You’d won the lottery, and all the losers
could go and cry about it. It made you uneasy that crying, you’d lash
out with whatever was on hand. Must have been some compassion
in you, making trouble. Otherwise, it was simple. The roads all led
to your door, currents that flowed in one direction, gravity. At the end
your talk was likewise mechanical, I said this then she said that but that was
just her and you know how she is, so I went here and saw him, and he
was what he always was, so I showed him. Where’s all that now? And what
did we feed on all those years? Something hidden, something you
had to love, couldn’t help but love in us, in others? Or did we imagine
we had that power? On the back of the picture you’d written, Peace
beauty I wish life could always be like this. You wrote that once! We chose
it for your grave, Mother, despite all. Because we could. We had that power.