My Mom is Mist Now
My mom is mist now like the spray of Chanel that lingered in the atmosphere of her wrists and ankles from morning till night My mom is a distant moon now as luminous as the pearls that she wore on special nights when being pretty was her only fate. My mom is music now She’s Gertrude Lawrence still guiding young lovers wherever they are bone-skinny Frank in the wee small hours Fred and Eleanor as they begin the Beguine My mom is in the clink of a china cup In the messages scrawled in the secret code of cake crumbs In the mumble of a soap opera In the plaintive whistle of a tea kettle My mom is rage now As uncontrollable as she was When the shadows swallowed her whole. And my mom is sorrow now Like the moment her mom died when she stood crying at the window that shut out the world and said in a voice much younger than mine, I’m an orphan now.