Legacy

At 61, she died in a bed in a room
in a home where she could only rub
the leaves of an African violet
against her cheek until they crumbled.

But even alive, Aunt Margaret
was a ghost of a woman: tracking
a blue-violet storm, unrecognizable
at reunions, fading from family portraits.

•

Like solid, stationary columns,
my mother and I waited outside
a motel in Lake Mary for her sister
who had called from there hours earlier.

She had climbed into a truck
with a man she didn’t know to continue
hitchhiking through Florida, refusing rescue
like a fist-sized wild bird.

•

We shielded the sun with our hands,
forced to hold our breath again,
waiting to learn where she would
surface, like air trapped in water.

Diesel singed the air in our nostrils
as we watched semis in route
with their cargo: citrus, tomatoes,
corrugated boxes of steel cans.

•

Would I recognize the first warning
signs? Could I walk through the squall,
eyes forward? Am I prepared for the demands
of flight and dependence on strangers?

The end should have been a bed of new grass
torn by cows in a field where a constellation
of fireflies spelled her name—marking
her existence with their neon bodies.

First published in Limestone (2007).

Read "Antjau, c. 715–525 B.C.E."

Read "Hard Love."

Read "In Search of an Ordinary God."

Read "The Majestic."