lemon cookie—
even as I pucker
I snuggle into a memory
Posts Tagged ‘memory’
One Bite
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged grief, lemon, memory, taste on March 15, 2025| 2 Comments »
Letter to My Son, Over Three Years Since He’s Gone
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, grief, love, memory, mother, siblings, son on March 5, 2025| 9 Comments »
You would be jealous, I think,
of how your sister is learning trig,
speaking Spanish, playing bridge.
You’d probably tease her, but really,
what you’d be thinking is, She is so cool.
And she is, sweetheart. She’s fun
and silly. Like you. Only like her.
We talk about you, of course.
Just this weekend, we remembered
how once you said if a 99-pound person
ate a one-pound burger, they
would be one percent burger.
I wonder what percent of your sister
is grief? And what percentage love?
Tonight a girl asked her if she had any siblings.
She said, yes, a brother. When the girl
asked her how old you were, she told her
the truth. That you were seventeen
when you died. What a terrible gift
to learn how to say the hardest things straight.
I can’t help but think if you are watching her,
you, too, must be in awe of who she’s becoming.
Oh, how we learn to grow from whatever soil
we’ve been given. I do not pretend to know
how this works. I only know she
is learning to transform ache into beauty,
nightmare into dream. I only know
I long for her to know love from you
the way a garden feels loved by sun, by rain.
When I Listen Tonight to Slack Key Guitar
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged memory, mothering, self love, self-forgiveness on February 1, 2025| 10 Comments »
I am again in a small blue room
with the bedroom windows open wide
and the breeze is alive in the thin
white curtains and the boy in the crib
doesn’t cry as he lies on his back
and my eyes are closed as I try
to be boring so he will sleep.
The music on the radio is smooth
and full, soothing and warm.
I had never heard slack key before.
Eighteen years later, it is easy
to feel the sweetness of those shaded
hours in a way I couldn’t then.
But I do not chastise that younger self
for not perceiving beauty. She was
tired. And hurting. A gaping wound.
I don’t lecture her about how
she should be better. I just hum
to the music now familiar and love her.
The notes shimmer like forgiveness in the air.
Tale of Two Moments
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, death, love, memory, mortality, mother, parenting on January 24, 2025| 2 Comments »
Holding my girl
on the couch,
came a moment
so tender because
I remembered
I will die—
what grace when,
minutes later,
lost in the bliss
of her warmth,
came a moment
so tender because
I forgot.
Evergreen
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged language, memory, tree on January 12, 2025| 8 Comments »
Skiing up the railroad grade
we pause to catch our breath
and from somewhere in the woods
a tree speaks to us in a spruce language
we can’t interpret,
and I am again a young girl
at the edge of the forest,
believing I understand the trees,
the way they call to me,
primal and true.
How did I ever forget?
Freezing the Peaches
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged love, memory, peaches on August 27, 2024| Leave a Comment »
For hours today, I hold
the sweet weight
of ripe peaches
in my palm, and
with the other hand,
I slice into the fruit,
the golden juice streaming
between my fingers,
sticky, delicious,
before I drop the slices
into the bags for the freezer.
What is it in the body
that knows to gather
what is ripe and preserve it
for a time in the future
when the world is barren?
I have tried to do this
with love. Sometimes,
midwinter, I pull out
a memory. I swear
sometimes it’s even
sweeter, but sometimes
it leaves me
ravenous.
Intimate
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, intimacy, kissing, memory on August 6, 2024| 5 Comments »
Mom must have been upstairs
the day I turned on the old TV
and saw a man and a woman
kissing each other.
Not just kissing.
Almost eating each other.
Mouths open, faces angling,
lips slanting to consume each other.
I stared at the hunger
on their faces and wondered
how they managed to hide
the saran wrap that was surely
between them, some thin layer
to keep them separate.
I searched the screen for any trace of it,
certain no one could ever
want to be that unprotected,
that close.
Almost fifty years later,
I sometimes notice invisible layers
that come between us—
thinner than saran wrap,
no less of a barrier.
How I love when they
disappear.
Even After We Were Back on Land
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged floating, friendship, memory, pond on July 26, 2024| 5 Comments »
for Kayleen
There, in the middle of the morning,
was a pause in which we floated
on the surface of the pond, floated
as if we were two rocks who, at least
for a moment, had learned how
to be feathers. If they were to write
the story of my life, they would likely
not mention the way the blue damselflies
landed on our legs, the way we drifted
into the reeds, but I hope I always remember
the way your legs dangled in the cold water,
the way your eyes stayed with mine
as I cried, the way we floated, no matter
how heavy the words, we floated,
like daisies, we floated.
Amidst the Cold of Winter
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Art, darkness, family, ice, light, memory, play, river, winter on July 23, 2024| 12 Comments »
There was that winter day when the ice floe
had cracked the river ice into giant slabs
thick as my open hand, tall as a child.
Our family gathered on the river bank
and played with the fractured chunks to make
sculptures—ice huts and ice caves and
a long ice wall that curved and snaked
through the snow along the river’s edge
like the spine of a giant stegosaurus,
jagged and upright. It’s never happened
again. The ice slabs always freeze together
or crush into bits, but that night,
we went out with dozens of candles
and lit the ice structures from within.
And the glow then, the gold that blazed
through the ice, was the kind of luminous
magic that winter seldom knows. What
was shattered and sharp, heavy and cold,
became radiance, brilliance, a visible hope
I didn’t yet know I would need, some proof
of what might transpire in the winter
of the heart—how broken and frigid,
it still might become a means
to gather beauty, to amplify the light.
Dairy Queen Drive Thru
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, father, food, grief, ice cream, memory on July 6, 2024| 19 Comments »
Plain vanilla. Soft serve.
You loved simple things, Dad.
On this day of your birth
I am a pilgrim who arrives
by car at the drive up window
at the closest DQ, an hour away.
There is devotion in the way
I savor the cold. The cake cone
melts on my tongue like a wafer.
There is joy in sampling
what brought you joy.
I ate the whole thing, Dad,
though it was too much.
But I didn’t want to waste
a bit of it. For those few sweet
moments, it tasted like
having you back.