yesterday, she watched over
the world,
and decided it was time it
had to go, these brittle
stock of trees, the average
birthday cards showcasing
how lonely life can
really be
she feels the spooling
of your indifference
in her casual milky years,
sprained with a blush
of memories she'd like
to dissolve in her
mother's tea to make
her remember
because she forgets
sometimes
in the pawn shop, i
found her old books
where she had inscribed
tiny words next to plath,
cummings and sexton
maybe they were small
because
she was never good enough
my own sky bleeds in that
territory
of shame
as i walk past her door,
siren wails emerge and
flock around her house
the mother, i think, its
the mother that has finally
died, given
to the shadow of
the alzeimer's cancer
but it is her they bring out
in their hands, and lifted
into the blue ambulance
there, by the wood fence
that has her name carved
in them when she was a
girl
like me,
there, i stand next to the
mother,
grey-haired and blank
innocence pulled in her eyes
she looks and me and
asks,
"who's the girl they
took
away?"
above our heads, a garden
of swollen clouds
pries into our private
thoughts.