“Nikki was, not Nikki is, Nikki loved, not Nikki loves” came with protests, cries and noise but how much grammar can you expect from little girls and boys? Who gets to illuminate to kids of two and five and four that death requires past participles and sister is no more?
Well that was the longest August ever has been, like too many hours made up each day. The songbirds quit their singing and the kids forgot to play. Sluggish minutes oozed on by in the heat like sticky tar while her heart and hands and mind passed to were from are.
But we’ll still wind that watch just to let it stop at five o’clock in the afternoon, because that tender, spiteful hour will always come too soon. Time will stop each time it does, just like it did that day when she wore her mother’s watch and time took her away.
When did she move from is to was? Was it that August day when all we could do was pray and hope and cry and hope and pray? Since when did cold verbs bind a life, active and passive combined, and when did she trade present for past and leave alive behind?
Justin understood it best, I say in his defense; he was the one who had it right when he spoke in the wrong tense— She didn’t go from is to was, She went from did to does. What Nikki was is sick. What Nikki is is better. Remembered.