Life and death

both in front of me

In an instant I can see through

sixty-nine years

I can see your mother

and your father

So much joy they must have had

the day that you entered the world

 

How much things have changed.

 

You are gone.

 

You are now only two pieces

of paper documenting your entrance into

and exit from

this world.

But of course you still remain.

You are still chaos, now spread

across the state

Sitting deep in the cracks of the earth

Bits of you in our houses

Traces of your face in ours

Your image still remaining between our synapses

 

You are still material here.

You are an endless, vast sea of things

Crammed all the way in, stuffed to the top

                So easy

                                to get

                                                lost in

So easy

                to keep finding more things

that don’t fit together

 

You are my mother’s downfall.

You are the enigma she couldn’t comprehend.

 

Your gossamer strings seemed so trivial

until she had to wrestle all of them

                Until they constricted her mind

                Until she became you, now evolved.

 

These things are you

and she is you

and I am her

 

I am eternally altered by

the day I found out she would be in for two years

and the day that I followed a yellow line

through a gate

                and another

escorted by officers

to a big glass wall and a telephone

                                        and her.

 

I couldn’t comprehend how

the people on the phone beside us

were smiling the whole time.

 

What would you think of her now?

 

I’ve been lifting her up

for so long now

but my tired arms

                are shaking

 

What would you think of me?

 

Since the day they told me about you

ae have both been spinning

but I have learned how to see through

the flurry