Five Answers My father in a nursing home. He still remembers, will forget. My mother in the red-dirt ground with ants. She was our memory. Me at my desk. Me in my bed trying to weave words like yarn or reeds or echoes. Samwell quiet on my desk. His black silk head remembers fingers. The dove outside is memory, incarnate.
All From Her My mother died before she got old. I have all from her that I’ll ever have. Her voice, people tell me, her books, way too many, the French horn she played late at night. An old Singer with hidden compartments, her fine hair that won’t hold a curl. Some of her secrets and some of her pain. A habit to cling to these objects as if they were memories themselves. A ceramic pig stands on my windowsill, silent with eyes closed. He’s dreaming of somewhere or sometime or maybe just supper, his smile holding everything I can’t ask my mother.
Wren Donovan First published in Last Stanza Poetry Journal, Issue 14, Fall 2023