It has been a week
since you passed
seven days
-eight depending on your math
it is dawn
in Boston and I have another week to go
before I must go back again
to say goodbye
days ago
I stood next to your body
your white hair
and those warts
still as the air before a storm
I touched you
and was not afraid
only perplexed and silenced
by the absence of you
laughing
talking
thanking this relative or that friend
for visiting
When you come back
I may not be here
-you warned us
and we laughed with you mouths twisted
with the ritual of the old lady
and her quiet dramatics
every year
we knew you would be here
waiting on a warm verandah
housedress
head-tie
soft slippers at hand
we arrive and make ourselves known immediately
with large gestures
and your firm hands feeling faces
then we would be gone again
children
grandchildren
great grandchildren
even the ones too removed to decipher
came
went
everything in this American room
is symmetry
angles
and lines drawn for precision
I am missing you
though I know you had to go
I know you have to go now
and my flailing
and weeping
and bleeding pints of longing for you
means nothing
except that I love you
loved you
go now
the soft palet of my survival needs time to harden
go
other horizons beckon rest from the turbulence
of us human
screaming torrents of unresolved torture
I am not a stranger to mourning women
mothers
grandmothers
small children I wish I had given birth to
you were the first
to matter so much
but this is only water
if I remember to breathe strategic
to lend myself the room to heal
and cry
as much as I want
I have to remind myself
that I am permitted to lament this loss
slicing so deeply into what marks me as woman
as child of a woman who will never be home
anywhere
borders bite toothy into the factions of our lives
wives and children who belong
elsewhere
drag us
tearing
tendons
achilles heels scraping the paved insecurities
buried
just below the skin- memoirs are in
and so I write
every page trying to make sense of this woman
so alive in the page
now dead
gone
kaput
trot
missing
I am missing you
Grandma
and if I weren't grieving
it would be funny
because my day
was never about the details of you
shuffling from bed to bath to chair to bed
others tell me how you breathed shallow
days before
you stopped eating
you knew it was time
and I wish I had the good sense your God gave you
to know when it is time
confused
I sit in a room in Boston
pain blinding my fingers trying to make sense of these keys
these clues
that tell me nothing of our life
our purpose
our path
stupid me
is sitting here waiting on a phone
for details I know will not come
unless I call
always
I have to call my mother
and my brother
and my sister
knuckles white with expectation
I dial
then listen
then absorb the pain of them
weeping
of lashing out at whoever is near
I am good at taking hits
from the people I love
it makes for a good story
later
when the dust settles I may still be sitting here
in my thirties
broken and alone
in the most geometric room in Boston
wondering how I got here
late nights and early mornings
leave me way too much time
to consider these things
this silence
is only broken by these notes I write
as I edit for lines and errors and truths turned upside down
I ask my palms
who are they for?
these cryptic characters
presented to invisible faces?
phantom-wishes who stand in for my friends?
I wish there was a window to the curves of your rooms
and rainbows that will aways stay
I ache to be home
somewhere
anywhere could be home
if I could find it
now that you are gone
the space around me will revert to the old dull
again
but
no matter
the strains of color you left will force me to look up
from these blank pages I keep trying to fill
now and again
I will remember
something or other you said
even though I still expect you to call
to say
sorry
I was only joking
the reality of these strange rooms
pummels me insessant like my mother's wailing histrionics
from far far away
I listen to the shrill speed of her
talking faster than she can grieve
my fingers grip these sheet that have been slept on
by just about everyone
her voice reaches for me
talons of her screeching for me to save her
all I can do
is forgive her
for abandoning me
and her mother
foreign as her moaning is to me
I hold her
my arms breaking from this reaching across the Atlantic
I hold her and breathe
because I know
this too shall pass
years ago
you told me, Grandma
and I still remember
and I am here
repeating it to another woman
again
all the while
waiting
waiting
I am always waiting
for something or other
to pass
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Posted by staceyann at September 14, 2007 08:49 AM