Waiting

• After, there’s no sign of you.
• Gone: your shoes, your white dresses and
• silk scarves, the tiny hats you perched
• on your head.
• Your childhood pony drawings, your
• comic books, novels and piano music.
• Your mother’s beaded purse,
• the emerald bracelet made
• (your father claimed)
• by prisoners on Death Row.
• And a clutter of silver medals:
• Jesus on his cross, Joan before she burnt,
• and, with one hand on her heart,
• The Queen of Heaven.
•  
• How did you manage such timely erasure?
• Did you haul the bags out in the night,
• one by one, so no one would notice?
• Did you think that without evidence you’d lived,
• there’d be no
• sorrow at your passing?
•  
• I remember watching your lips move
• as you prayed to a god you no longer
• believed in,
• and how you cried when you knew
• it was nearly time to leave. And I remember
• the morning you were finally ready, when
• you lay still—so still it fooled me—as if you
• couldn’t bear to disturb the atoms of air
• above your head.
•  
• But in the end you’re everywhere!
• I see you in your grandson, the tendrils of
• hair tangled around his ear,
• the pink star-shaped hand he waves
• above his crib. I hear you in my brother’s hoot
• when someone gets too close.
•  
• I find you there—just there—in winter’s glittery sky,
• and in the spring, leaning against the shed
• and smiling at the ragged purple tulips
• you planted one autumn before an ice storm.
• And I remember how when I said It’s too cold.
• They’ll never come up,
• you said, Wait. Just wait.
•  

Photo graciously provided by Zach Lezniewicz from Unsplash.