Who was my mother before
she met my father and learned to scream?

Did she wear her hair long and loose,
the thick sheets of burnt oak wheat curled
habitually between her young piano fingers?
Did she stop singing Sam Cooke when people
came in the room? Did cigarets find their home
between her smiles, were curses running  
like bitter saliva through her teeth?

Most importantly: Did she come home one day
--to Pa folded in his armchair, hands tucked tight
against his sides, whiskey to his right, Ma fixing  
dinner with an eye on her dead sons's picture,
Franny working the late shift down at the tracks,--
and know that every night would be shorter than the next
until she was the ghost walking the bright foreign halls
of married life.