Someone enters your life
on a day you no longer
remember. The years pass,
and she becomes the mother
you never had, the older
sister smoking before breakfast,
the first friend. She lies back
on the worn sofa in the heat
of summer and shares a season
of baseball. When you are
twelve she explains the world,
how the people were sold
down the river, how someone
will always work and waste
away to these essential bones,
muscles, and tendons. She explains
your brother, who at sixteen
needs two clean shirts a day
and will grow to command, she
explains you, who will never,
and she blesses you with a hand
mussing your hair. One day
she is gone, over forty and she
has fallen in love again,
and love has taken her off
to a man with one leg
and no prospects. A postcard
from California and then
a silence that lasts.
The ironing board waits
in the corner, the worn black
shoes are kicked back into
the closet, her yellowing slip
sags on the back of her chair
until your mother, cursing,
tears it into rags and garbage.
You will look and find her
in the long jaws of other
women, in the hard eyes
that can gleam without hope,
you will find her again
and again because with
two open hands, with a voice
that said anything, with
a new smile for each
new loss, she showed you
a world she could die for.