Today's 365/365 2010 poem (rough draft, of course)
“And he was one of the ones they found,” she said as she sipped her tea. For a second, I thought she might bless herself, not that she ever does that. “Goodness, every bone in his body was broken. Can you imagine what that must have looked like?”
I really hate when she brings this up, but what can you say when someone starts rattling about cheek swabs and cleanup crews? I was just hoping she wouldn’t cry this time.
People who don’t know her like I do usually look away to be polite, feigning interest in a plant or a piece of art or something going on outside the window. Sometimes the ones who were in the city that day or stuck in the traffic outside of it nod as soothingly as they can, though few have offered up their stories.
While I did inherit the gene that makes me prone to teary restaurant scenes myself, I always stiffen up when we get to this part-usually once the party has reached the tootsie-roll center of a debate about the war, which usually comes wrapped in a comment about money or politics or one of those other things we should all know better than to pair with an entrée.
You’d almost think she likes crying about it, that maybe it’s her way of cutting the music and bringing up the house lights on what she doesn’t want to talk about. The way she fingers the diamond peace sign that hangs from the chain around her neck, my mother looks, sometimes, like she doesn’t know how she got here, like she worries no one else is thinking about how quickly numbers on paper can burn into meaninglessness.
I’ve never told her that every time I get into an elevator or board a plane or subway car or even just look down from too high up, I have to choke down the same agnostic prayer I’ve been carrying around since I was sixteen. She’d tell me it’s no use worrying about Your Time, but sometimes, when I catch the eye of a man on the uptown Q or downtown A, I think, “He knows something I don’t know yet.”
I really hate when she brings this up, but what can you say when someone starts rattling about cheek swabs and cleanup crews? I was just hoping she wouldn’t cry this time.
People who don’t know her like I do usually look away to be polite, feigning interest in a plant or a piece of art or something going on outside the window. Sometimes the ones who were in the city that day or stuck in the traffic outside of it nod as soothingly as they can, though few have offered up their stories.
While I did inherit the gene that makes me prone to teary restaurant scenes myself, I always stiffen up when we get to this part-usually once the party has reached the tootsie-roll center of a debate about the war, which usually comes wrapped in a comment about money or politics or one of those other things we should all know better than to pair with an entrée.
You’d almost think she likes crying about it, that maybe it’s her way of cutting the music and bringing up the house lights on what she doesn’t want to talk about. The way she fingers the diamond peace sign that hangs from the chain around her neck, my mother looks, sometimes, like she doesn’t know how she got here, like she worries no one else is thinking about how quickly numbers on paper can burn into meaninglessness.
I’ve never told her that every time I get into an elevator or board a plane or subway car or even just look down from too high up, I have to choke down the same agnostic prayer I’ve been carrying around since I was sixteen. She’d tell me it’s no use worrying about Your Time, but sometimes, when I catch the eye of a man on the uptown Q or downtown A, I think, “He knows something I don’t know yet.”