It sits with legs elevated
to help the fluid drain
into its empty chest cavity
skinny, skinnier, then bone thin
as an Xray transparency.
Fading into the itchy couch
yet precise, unsmiling
the once blue eyes black with pain,
this last bit of her,
buttoned into her crisply pressed,
white clothing,
her tiny, pristine sneakers neatly tied
with double knots for safety,
like a miniature bride.
As if her orderliness
her lack of sloth
could keep her here,
from sliding lazily over
to the other side.
I remind it of what she’d said too often,
how I was incapable of seeing clearly,
only in black and white,
never as things were
in shades of gray.
This was true of course, and not
because
one minute she was gone
when just before she’d been here,
still waving me away,
my tired Mother’s ghost
dissolving in a blur of thin, grey air.
When I asked her, “Ma
how much more black and white
can you get than that?”
She whispered now
too tired to speak,
“Go ahead,
see for yourself…..”
and sadly, finally,
disappeared.
I can’t help beg this
quiet page, its black scrawls entombed
with white, be something
her eyeless eyes rest upon
fondly,
remembering our
life long argument
seesawing,
as if it was a replacement,
a simulacrum for love.
Goodnight mother,
please rest now…
Goodnight.
But neither of us can,
up all night restless and
hungry for what she’d missed in life,
my mother’s ghost is lonely.
So I sit with her
listening to everything
she can no longer say
or feel.
