We know all the avenues, and all the roads.
I can walk to Mrytle, Wyckoff, or Knickerbocker
with my eyes closed.
And I do.
More than you can imagine.
The way to the post office, the supermarket, the cuchifrito.
Street fairs, and flea markets.
All across Brooklyn and Queens.
Times Square, 34th Street, and Broadway.
All the bus lines, all the trains.
My soul aches
the way people's broken bones ache
on rainy days. Except for me
it's every day
when my eyes are open.
We roam Bellevue, Memorial Sloan Kettering,
the dollar stores, and the parks.
All the places I don't visit anymore
in New York. We're like ghosts
replaying records new and old. Except one of us
is alive,
and alone.
All the time,
I hang out with my mother.
Nowhere fancy. Nowhere grand.
Just a mother and her daughter buying groceries together
every night
since she passed.
I dream, and I long
for the roads our hearts know.
And for the life mama, and I
no longer have.
- Written in April, 2022
YOU ARE READING
A votive that has un-mothered
PoetryA collection of grief poems from losing my mother to cancer. I may or may not keep this up here. I doubt there's any audience for this kind of thing on this site. Trigger warning. Lots of raw imagery in these poems. You can follow Rachel's work on...
