On an Ohio vacation, we got the call.
Dressed in a navy t-shirt, and stiff boating shorts
(plucked fresh off a J. Crew shelf just earlier that morning –
I wanted a darker grey)
My mother and I parked by the open grave.
The visitation was packed with strangers.
Stuffy, suffocating almost – I tugged at the new shorts,
coarse, rough-feeling, no time to break in yet –
fibers still unset –
My back hugs peeling wallpaper.
My mother's tears stain my shirt, the salt stiffening fresh fabric –
Baptism. Each tear carves fresh wrinkles, crossing her face like rivers,
slicing into her like canyons. Her hands are childlike upon my shirt,
grasping blindly for anything, her vision blurred, her breath short,
her heart broken.
I peer at the uncovered casket and look at the woman's face.
Thin halo of white hair, skin pale like alabaster –
She is stiff. Eyes fixed, blood cold. Her hands clasp tightly.
Her black cardigan holds her like a piece of glass,
stiff, hard, yet so fragile, threatening each second to crack,
and the sounds of its breaking my mother's muffled cries,
and my hand's rhythmless consoling pats upon her back.
Aug 7, 2018
Aug 7, 2018 at 9:00 PM UTC
On an Ohio vacation, we got the call.
Dressed in a navy t-shirt, and stiff boating shorts
(plucked fresh off a J. Crew shelf just earlier that morning –
I wanted a darker grey)
My mother and I parked by the open grave.
The visitation was packed with strangers.
Stuffy, suffocating almost – I tugged at the new shorts,
coarse, rough-feeling, no time to break in yet –
fibers still unset –
My back hugs peeling wallpaper.
My mother's tears stain my shirt, the salt stiffening fresh fabric –
Baptism. Each tear carves fresh wrinkles, crossing her face like rivers,
slicing into her like canyons. Her hands are childlike upon my shirt,
grasping blindly for anything, her vision blurred, her breath short,
her heart broken.
I peer at the uncovered casket and look at the woman's face.
Thin halo of white hair, skin pale like alabaster –
She is stiff. Eyes fixed, blood cold. Her hands clasp tightly.
Her black cardigan holds her like a piece of glass,
stiff, hard, yet so fragile, threatening each second to crack,
and the sounds of its breaking my mother's muffled cries,
and my hand's rhythmless consoling pats upon her back.
This poem is inspired by the death of a very prominent woman in my mother's upbringing, who she in turn referred to as her second mother. I had never met her before, or if I had, I have no recollection of it.
I could feel my mother's profound sense of loss, flowing off of her like waves, washing over me. I felt an emptiness, a lack of emotion, and this combination of empathy and indifference struck an interesting chord indeed.
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