alewives

The waves are coming higher now,
and stronger, their whitecapped tops struggling
like a train picking up speed.
Mama and I stand at the edge and watch
as it comes to our ankles,
wrapping seaweed around our bones
like jewelry.

Mama held one bony finger to her lips,
tanned and freckled fingers and
tanned and freckled lips and
she picked up her skirt and stepped out
into the first swell of the sand
past the water.

And then the second, the third,
and when her head went beneath I waited
expecting it to rise again, like a moon or a
sand-filled balloon doll.

I started to scream and scream and scream
and scream and scream
and scream
until my mouth filled with sand
and sirens came.




long division

after the divorce
my father took the living room couch
and left a gap, a blank, empty spot in the white room
with the bay window,
like a missing puzzle piece.
I laid there, ran my fingers over
the indentations on the carpet where the
heavy legs had once
stood.

he took a small apartment on the other side of town,
it had white walls, white appliances,
a soft beige carpet.
we came every other weekend,
the two of us, you, James and I,
and ordered pizza because there was nothing
in the refrigerator but sweet cream butter, dijon mustard
and a few lonely dill pickle spears.

and then, at night,
we slept in one bed, like a slumber party,
James and I, our things in bags, my toys lined up
on a shelf in the hall closet.
he didn’t insist on a bedtime then,
as if staying up until dawn playing Mortal Kombat was
recompense for
the gap on the floor where a dining room table should have been
for the two homes I shuffled between,
each missing parts,
like a thousand-piece puzzle torn
apart.




on tuesdays

Tuesdays are the quiet days,
Mama and I sit silently at the old butcherblock
countertop, side-by-side,
our fingers drumming along to the beat of the
syllables
in the newspaper.

“How was your day?” she asks me,
Pause, think a moment for something
new, vibrant, fascinating
I tripped over an electric chair.
“Fine.” I draw blanks.
Shoot blanks.

Half-empty like the bottle of cheap wine and
the box of cereal I’m eating - dry, dinnertime.
Silence eases on into stretches that bound
across ages, Siberian plains,
separately,
our eyes drag along tiny black print and search for
names, names like ours,
in the obituaries.