I am five years old
And my mother is dead
Or she might be, I’m not too sure
I am sure I’m in the closet
The one near my parents’ room
Filled with my father’s jackets and spare towels
Bubbling mold, silver dollars falling from my father’s pockets
Rain on one of my mother’s china dolls
Coat of dust, ash, an undertow
Her hands are like white powder
Looking glass, tornadoes of simple blue
Cat’s eyes I’ve won from my dead mother
She was a girl once
With flowers on her dress
Now she haunts this closet
And the things I’ve lost with no regard
They litter this empty room
I’m holding her next to me in the dark
Together in the belly of the whale
She tugs on one of the woolen sleeves
Of my father’s jacket
With her lacey white hands
She wipes the blood from my face
And the breath of escape my mother gave
As I held her for the last time