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Poem
Sweet mother, Virginia Slim wedged between your fingers,  
that last light willed to die at the rig
of a darkened room.  
You—half-goddess, half-ghost, pinioned in some still-life setting
of tumbled smoke and silver hair.  
I’d always thought the air around your form was tilted at some aberrant angle,
the world unaligned with your shape.  

You are the kind of woman who can hold grief in the palm
of her hands without spilling over. That's the thing
about loads—they're never really lost. Cigarette smoke curled up, a ribbon
unwound into the stratosphere of your apartment-like space—
a good dream that doesn't know how to wake.

I remember how last week's dinner lingered in the kitchen,
the sound of silver on porcelain— 
all that clatter, all that chatter, 
as we dined neatly on stowed secrets. 
You and I, we knew how to swallow the things 
that couldn't be said— 
at tables, where we could taste the heft of our lives 
while never letting it touch our tongues.

I caught the way you flicked your cigarette 
into the heat of the pavement,  
as though casting off some part of you  
we were never meant to see.  
That’s what people do, right?  
Leave their burdens on sidewalks,  
let them burn underfoot,  
pretend the world won’t notice.  
You taught me that—  
how to parse the heavy parts  
where no one will care.  

On our way to dine, the smell of food half-remembered—  
the mess of dinners that never felt like a feast  
but always promised to fill us up.  
There was nothing about those meals that spoke to the hunger  
and still, we ate because that’s what folks do:  
they feed themselves with what they have  
whether it’s enough or not.  

You tapped your cigarette 
against the ground and I thought...  
there are places with no ashtrays
that will always have room for bad habits.  
I wanted to ask why  
but sometimes, there's no need to ask a question
when deep down you know the answer. 

Once, I felt sure you were humming—  
something low and uneven,  
a tune that could’ve been a lullaby  
had it not been cradled on sharp edges.  
Was it for me?  
For someone I’ve never met but whose name  
still stains your voice?  
Or was it for yourself—  
a small, deliberate kindness  
you learned to give when no one else would?  
That’s something I never reconciled—  
the music you made in a silence I couldn’t reach.  

And the keys, jingling in your purse  
as you walk like you’re still twenty,  
still burning through life like a short fuse—  
I wondered what they were for, those years
of keys heavy with memories never asked for.  
What doors do they open,  
what rooms you never let me in?  
But I already knew—  
you were the door  
and the key was never meant for me.  

I didn’t ask you,  
but maybe I should’ve.  
Maybe I could’ve  
but the waitress came with her notepad and a smile  
and we were too busy pretending we weren’t both  
older than we used to be.  
Still, you could finish a plate like you never  
spent a day hungry,  
wearing your age like something  
you borrowed just yesterday—temporary as 
smoke escaping those midling chimney stacks.  

And in that quiet of us eating—  
the cigarette, the keys,  
I could hear the sound of you  
walking out of your past  
though not quite leaving it.  

I left a tip.  
We stepped back into the world  
like we were never meant to be here anyway.
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