Mom’s going to die someday

Mom’s going to die
someday. While driving to school,
fiddling with cds and a sore throat
the thought suddenly chokes,
like the number of cars in front
of me, long-lines of cold
color. One call and all will
stop-short.

Childhood let’s us
float with Barbies
who don’t get grey hair
or lose mortgages to men in
dense offices. We fly
from markings on walls–
up and higher, until soon
we’re at the high school lot,
and mom’s nervous
in a passenger seat while snotty teen
whines, “I know, I know!”

Thoughts are postponed
and prepared until one day,
while 19 and soiled in traffic,
late to something (that’s really nothing,)
it dawns that there will come
a morning when we won’t be
able to push
button-number-two,
dialing away on the 405
and feel pacified.
There won’t be an answer
or help on how to drive;
where to steer.
I sob and pull to
the side.

A Letter of Resignation

It falls, her bag, as she moves
to her room, and recalls,
“get going you old hag.”
And it’s done.
Weeping like melted ice
she sits thinking of time
and life and how fast
it’s all been (though she can’t find
words to describe.) With kids grown,
and gone, making once-a-month visits
to quiet home, she’s
odd. Her patrons have passed and
while two still call,
she has too much pride
to set up curlers and a wash
in a home so small.
Hunched, the silhouette’s cheeks
are wet-on-the-bed, while the
coo-coo clock sounds.

And so it’s done—
and empty hands with time
to re-arrange furniture and
make a meal are worn
fine with thread-like wrinkles
that once held a comb, and
did something to heal the
fear of how many more years…
And it’s done: the final march through
automatic doors to pass one note
that couldn’t abridge fourteen years.
Wobbling to the kitchen
to prepare another meal,
she takes up an onion, and peels.