The father bowed his head

heavy

and

heavenly

does this conversation hang in the air.

Dripping

like goblets of wine

down

from the sky onto the window panes.

I held my grandfathers hand

and waited

for my own description

to fall from my fathers lips.

Who was I?

Am I that little girl still?

The sea was in view

and I gazed down on it

from this penthouse view.

Seattle

was something else then

something highly different from what it is now.

My grandfather is old

but well preserved

and his hands

are like my fathers

but I wasn't afraid of them.

Stucco walls surrounded me

and I realized that I was the only one who came

the only child at this large table

and the only child who would later go to Gudrun's funeral.

I'm not ashamed

of my position

or place

as the lovely strong one

in this crowded hall of Wilson's and Ex-Wilson's,

and

everyone else in between.

I don't know who I am in this mix

being so different and so torn away from the rest

starting with that 9-11 call

and ending now

with this

not to mention the two weeks of hospital visits that followed.

Knowing

was only the half of it.

And how

that little girl

holding her grandfathers hand

slipped away from me

that day in March

when for once I was the center of gravitation

for all of these marvelously normal people.

I am positioned

to be the bad one

the one in the wrong

but I

never chose that position

and I

have never known anything else.