And Painted the Floor

In the kitchen

my mother was dead with no religion;

she’d bumped her head and painted the floor.

 

Dead head red

linoleum

 

Mother were your eyes closed or open?

Only the cat knows

as well as policemen.

 

Bloated bag of bones

drained and taking space in chest of drawers…

you don’t belong there but what can I do?

I’ve never been good at saving you.

 

You wait for the oven that will

fulfill

your wishes.

Don’t fret mother;

your girls won’t toss the dirt on you.

We will wear your body dressed in silver

displayed ‘round our necks.

 

No one can hurt you now.

Not your mother or your father;

not corrupt Jehovah

who’d abandoned you at sixteen years

young.

 

Mama 19 again at 24;

You weren’t perfect but you were ours

and you were beautiful even at your ugliest

because we knew you loved us

so fucking hard it hurt sometimes.

 

You were a glorious lioness.

A fucking alcoholic, but a lioness just the same.

And I’m so angry!

So goddamned sad!

 

My mother is dead. And it doesn’t matter if her eyes were closed or open.

Those eyes I’ll never see again.

Those most beautiful eyes that beheld me the day I was born.

Those eyes I’ve learned to read.

The ones I’ve loved and hated in equal turns—

sometimes green grey or blue

but always true.

The ones made dull when she bumped her head

and painted the floor.