My Mom is Mist Now

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My mom is mist now

Like the wrist spray of Arpege

That used to follow her

Like me

In the pony gallop of sock trails

Wherever she went.

My mom is longing now

A distant moon

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 guiding young lovers

Wherever they are

Bone-skinny Frank in the wee hours 

Fred and Eleanor as they begin the Beguine

My mom is the song that arrives

At the port of night

When I turn and try to 

Hold the empty sea.

My mom is in the clink of china cups now.

In the messages scrawled in the secret code of cake crumbs

In the murmur of a soap opera

In the whistle of a kettle 

On the filter tip of a lip-stained cigarette

In the final resting place of an ashtray.

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 after her mom died.

She stood at the window crying

And then turned to me and said

in a voice much younger than mine,

I’m an orphan now.

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