Come in. Come sit with me. I'm dying to tell you things. I may be breaking into tears now and then, but it does me good to see people, to hear my own voice.
I dream complicated sequences
silent cinemas, rooms always too cramped
too dark, too uncharted.
No exit in these dreams
no entry either.
When I finally wake, I'm in a sweat.
I'm working at being still.
I'm working at being busy.
In the middle of the day, frantic
I run to the post office hoping for something. NO
not another condolence. I'm saturated with these.
People know thousands of words and what
do they say? So Sorry!
No. No. Say, instead, what a lucky woman you have been
all those years. Your mother lost a child who was just a few
months old and she carried on and on for ever. What did she
know of that life that slipped away? The child had a name, but
no history.
Ask instead:
What did your boy/man do? How did he live? How did he love?
What kind of childhood did he have?
He was RH negative like me, I start.
You know that's a universal donor!
He was a generous child.
You know, he was not an easy student?
What?
He had trouble with his teachers, to my consternation.
He had trouble with their rules, their routines.
I want to capture these memories before they fade.
