Louise

I try to imagine a time when my eyes crumple into heavy lace
and plum veins ribbon their way from my soughing heart
to wringing hands to crinkled toes to melanoma’d nose,
after I’ve started wearing curlers at all hours,
when my grands become greats become great greats
with holes in their pimply faces and slacks that cost more than my Jon ever
thought to earn.
And I cannot know them.
And they’d not think to know me
because before my bones cracked symphonies, forty was not the new twenty
and we didn’t poison our faces into stagnant masks
unable to scream smiles, crash frowns, cascade tears
over husbands and children and the friends whose names I can only recall on car-rides.
I suppose I’d sometimes dwell on the things I’ve lost
when soap smells and the zest of ancient kisses whisper through my floured kitchen.
My Jon who gored bulls, exhausted bottles, and was conquered by his liver.
My little Jackie who kept me strolling twice round my pond daily.
My Ellie who bore my children and then her own on the hips that hid her cancer.
That second acre of strawberries I gave up at 92.
That son who won’t speak to me cross the way.
Those memories, that sanity I brush away like strands of hair after chemo,
not white nor silver. Gray as grey-matter. Dead as my daughter.
And the bile of this past will gather in my cheeks when I’m alone,
collect my liver spots in folds
and drain salt from my tear ducts onto the rugs I braid to pass January.
But my squat home will squabble sometimes like a child,
entailing my labor in exchange for harboring the shadows of those who will leave me.
And I will still throw orotund laughter to the ceiling from a heart that refuses to die
(And I won’t know why I should still be alive)
when my namesake unsheathes Jon’s last bottle,
choruses a shot,
surfaces a brazier to strap on the naked idols in my youngest’s excessive yard.
And we drive through maples housing dead memories
and she bubbles through pursed lips
as I give a role call of the dead by street,
because it is a bit ridiculous to be this old.
And I’m just waiting for the good Lord to suck me up.
 
In 2010, "Louise," first published in Aquinas College's Sampler, was an Honorable
Mention in The Academy of American Poets University and College Poetry Prize.