Nearer

She left a bit at a time

over years and years of loss

that seeped like a leak

from a crack in the foundation

of the family.

 

She held it together.

​

I don’t know how.

​

When I think of my mother

I see someone vague in a shell.

​

Full and yet empty.

​

Like a cloud in a jar.

​

Or ghosts in a room,

her self was haunted like that.

 

Watching her leave me

I thought

now she’ll remember my name,

remember my face,

remember my dreams

and my soul crushing disappointments,

at least the ones I told her about

which weren’t many because 

I’d never understood that she’d lived a life too

and she’d understand

​

Being beaten up in a cemetery at midnight,

Being hurt and lost and excited 

And betrayed and joyous and in love and everything 

​

else it means to be a human at the mercy of mystifying forces

a woman at the mercy of every goddamned thing in this world.

 

I never understood that she’d be there no matter what. 

I never understood that she’d love me anyway.

I never understood that she needed me to know her

beyond how I knew her. 

 

It’s hard to miss someone you never really knew,

however ever-present they were.

 

Who was I with her?

Who am I without her?

Who were we together? 

 

I watched closely as she left us.

So closely, each second a long pause

before the next second. 

Inexorably, her skeleton made itself known

beneath the surrender of her skin, 

the hollow of her mouth.

 

The heat of her hands seared us.

​

Dad couldn’t understand how she could be leaving,

even as her hands were hot and felt like life on fire.

 

I had heard of a golden thread that ushers the spirit

through the skull to the heavens. 

 

I looked for it.

 

I looked hard and long,

for hours and days. 

 

I had always been the one to leave.

Couldn’t wait to get away. 

​

This time it was her turn, and I understood

what it feels like

to be left by someone you love.  

 

But as I watched her leave,

I understood.  

 

She’s nearer than she’s ever been.