Ars Poetica

It’s not a perfect world, Mother, but you died at home, without thought, in little or no pain, better than most. Still, if I could change it, I would

take some things away. I would take away the dribble of half-chewed food that fell down your chin from your open mouth like a thick tear.

I would take you out of your chair at the breakfast table and put you back in bed, would make you sleep. I would take away

the last morning you woke up in that house, would take away the house, but leave the wind chimes that you loved to hear

in spring. I would take away the illness from your brain, would take my ill sister away. I would erase my silence, erase my words,

make years disappear. I would not insist on cross-dressing for Halloween when I was six, wailing and kicking the back of the driver’s seat

until you wheeled the car back into the parking space and returned to the counter at Roses discount store to exchange the ghost costume you’d chosen

for the wicked witch I wanted to be. I would be a ghost for you, Mother. I would fade away into another past

It’s just another thing you’d never know. I would not let you take that first step down into the mouth of the cave.

You would meet a kinder man in 1946. I wouldn’t be there for you, Mother. I never was. I’m not here now. This is another world

where you can smell gardenias, watch cardinals at the feeder. Listen—a distant coastal breeze is playing wind chimes, and you can hear them.