Perhaps three years ago
my son gave me three paper slips,
each one an IOU with his name and phone number
and the promise to do whatever I asked him to do.
I saved the slips in my bathroom drawer
where they mingled with hair ties
and toothpaste tubes,
until a month ago, when I wrote on one
in small blue cursive,
Please send a sign to your sister you love her.
And today, two months after his death,
a single postcard came, addressed to my daughter,
a postcard sent from Minnesota
but written in his hand.
It doesn’t say I love you. It’s a photo
of an old marketplace in Cusco,
a city he visited one week before he died.
He tells her about it, says it’s a place he enjoys.
And there, on the four-by-six cardstock,
unfurling between his handwritten words
is the unsaid message she seldom heard—
You’re important to me.
I love you. I miss you.
I’m grateful you’re in my life.
Consider this poem a thank you letter
addressed to what I can’t understand.
Thank you for finding a way to say
the words that couldn’t be said.
Thank you for letting an absence
tell a larger story. Thank you
for unusual postage.
For wonder. For special delivery.
Posts Tagged ‘sister’
Delivering on a Promise
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged brother, death, IOU, letter, postcard, promise, sister on October 12, 2021| 7 Comments »
United
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged brother, diversity, division, love, sister on September 20, 2020| 5 Comments »
Over thirty years later
I still return to the night
when my brother and I
stood in the kitchen and argued
the merits of Grape Nuts,
versus Cap’n Crunch.
Potassium, potassium, potassium.
I still hear him chanting
the one nutrient his cereal
had more of than mine.
Breakfast was the least
of our differences,
but it taught us to laugh
as we disagreed
so that later, when the stakes
were higher—
presidential elections
and gun laws—
we could argue till I cried,
then snuggle on the couch.
Though we seldom agree,
though we will forever cancel each other’s votes,
though I will never eat Cap’n Crunch,
I’ll sit with him as he eats it,
laughing, shaking my head,
grateful he teaches me so much
about how I am not.
He will celebrate me and buy me
any damn cereal I want.
Though we disagree about almost everything
except how much we love each other—
we are two threads in a civilization
that would try to makes us believe
we couldn’t be one cloth—
but we are, woven tight, we are.
At the End of Les Miserables
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged brother, family, love, musical, sister, theater on February 1, 2020| 1 Comment »
And again tonight, despite injustice and hatred,
Jean Valjean learns to love. And again tonight,
in the face of fear and prejudice, he finds kindness.
And again tonight, I weep as he nears his death.
I couldn’t say for whom I am weeping—for him,
for the girl he adopted, for the mother who died,
for the empty chairs, for the whole cast
who remind me too much of the world we live in.
For myself, of course, and my longing to do
what is right. But more than anything, I weep
with the memory of watching this very same scene
thirty years ago, sitting beside my brother,
both of us baptized in tears as Fontine and Eponine
sing behind Valjean, reminding him it is no small miracle
to love someone. I couldn’t have known then
how this would be the memory I’d return to again
and again when I think of my brother. There we are,
young and full of competing ideals, holding each other,
laughing through our crying, ready to meet the world
and each other tear-stained and open to news of grace.
The Night Before Thanksgiving
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged brother, memory, poem, poetry, self image, sister, thanksgiving on November 27, 2019| 2 Comments »
Forty years later, my brother and I
go to the Jewel to buy evaporated milk
and egg nog, and part of me doubts
I will remember the way that we scoured
the produce aisle for green beans. Then again,
who could say why I remember
with incredible clarity the moments
when I was ten and we had just finished
the great turkey feast and my brother and I,
as we loved to do, asked to be excused,
but instead of leaving the dining room,
we simply lay on the floor beneath the table
with our feet up on our chairs
and conversed with each other
there across the green and white shag.
I don’t recall what we said or what we wore,
and it was no important moment, but
I remember the feel of it:
I knew we were together in this—
this moment, this family, this life,
so much so that forty years later
the memory of these ten minutes
is as real to me as the scent of the pumpkin pie
my sister-in-law baked tonight.
How is it that such a short snippet of time
defines us? How it comes to be
the moment we return to again and again
to remind ourselves who we are,
who we love, and why we are here—
those moments, stolen, and still
they give us back ourselves. Even now
in the produce aisle of Jewel, I can feel it—
the carpet against my cheek, can smell
the cranberry salad, can hear my grandfather
and grandmother laughing over our heads,
my brother’s eyes widening, mischievous, so alive.
After the Elementary School Concert
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged brother, communication, daughter, kindness, parenting, poem, poetry, sibling, sister, son on December 14, 2018| 2 Comments »
And after the boy
hugs his sister
and tells her
she did a great job,
after he wipes
her tears and holds
her and wraps her
in his awkward arms,
after she leans
into him, their
sapling trunks
sloping toward
each other,
I want to tell him
how proud I am
of the ways
he is growing,
want to affirm
how much depends
on love, want
to say I see his tenderness,
but the soil beneath
them is unstable,
precious, and my voice
is full of heavy clouds,
so I wait until
they sway apart,
then I walk closer
and manage to say
through invisible rain,
It’s time.
Let’s go home.
Sitting Beside My Brother at the Funeral
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged brother, death, family, grief, loss, poem, poetry, sister on June 1, 2018| 3 Comments »
There was a time when I’d pull his hair out
if he sat too close to me on the couch.
Now, I curl into his right side,
lean my head on his shoulder,
feel the trembling of his chest
as he weeps. How good it feels
to be close to him as we grieve.
How familiar, the shape of his head,
the heft of his hand as he reaches for mine.
How deeply right, this leaning
into sorrow together.
For My Sister Across the Ocean
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged missing, ocean, poem, poetry, sister on November 1, 2015| 4 Comments »
In the empty kitchen I read
your letter out loud,
try to speak in your tones
as if I might trick my ears,
but there are too many waves
in my voice, I can hardly keep my head
above the water, they are deep
the tides between here and there.
For My Brother, Who Must Have a Whole Closet of Soft Green Shirts
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged brother, gift, giving, green, memory, poem, poetry, sister on December 12, 2014| 5 Comments »
For Christmas, I want to buy you the softest green
shirt, green the color of Wisconsin in springtime,
so green we could almost fall into the color
and find ourselves running once more to the lake,
cane poles in hand, to see if the fish are biting.
Or we might find ourselves in the dark green woods
behind the neighbor’s house where we used to dig
in the old junk yard for shards of blue and white porcelain.
But green is my favorite color, not yours. And those days
of running down the great grassy hill are gone, are gone
and faded. You like blue. Forgive me, brother, for buying
you again for Christmas another green shirt. Oh hush,
can you hear them, the cicadas, trilling through the leaves
of the old willow tree, serenading the warm summer night?