An Anniversary...of sorts

Seven years ago today my mom died. I don't think I have any words for this. In many ways it is heartbreaking to me that we learn to go on. I remember how lost I was, how completely bereft after she died. For the longest time I felt the loss acutely. She was simply not there. It was shocking. Yet somehow over time I absorbed that loss, and it's as if the vacuum that she left has become a part of me, just as surely as she is a part of me.

I was going to post a poem that I wrote before she died. It's called The Diagnosis. I cannot. It's such a short poem, and in so few words it's just...devastating. Too much truth or something. So I'll post this one instead. I wrote it on Thanksgiving Day, two months after she died. Seven years later I still think it captures those days perfectly.


Thanksgiving

your veins ran to crimson
your bruises to mulberry
your skin to honey
before autumn even arrived

my eyes I could not lift
suspended
I was transfixed
upon the unexpected
passage of your seasons

so I drank your honey skin
warmed myself
at the bedside of your illumination
tenderly held
your stained and thinning hands
in September, thanksgiving was upon me

now winter is nearly here
but your autumn haunts me still
the hushed morning
a Saturday
when your last leaves blew away