Empty
a poem
She lived by the railroad but no longer heard the sound
Drove barefoot and red-toed across town without seatbelts or locked front doors
Every summer I stayed with her for Vacation Bible School
She filled up a room, a restaurant, a sanctuary, a September prairie
She died on Tuesday.
Her life was in the middle of unfinished,
beginning again
After her beloved husband died five years ago, she was learning to live alone for the first time,
passing the hallways of memories and ever with her God
A generation apart, both of us were single without wanting to be
We entered a season of new kinship, a commonality,
She, having been wedded to a man who adored her for 46 years,
and I, no longer a child or even a young woman, and on my own
We shared a new language, known only to us.
Did I appreciate her for the precision with which she knew me?
My first grandmother was a revolutionary, and died before my birth
My second grandmother: a firebrand dosed in desolation and magic who died the fall before last. Her spirit comes to me at Christmas;
We are dying out.
How many women of my lineage remain
who do not apologize for the space we cannot help but take up,
or shave the corners down to be less expansive?
The arc of the years to come is altered
My sky is smaller
I ask her what she thinks about this death, the end of her life
I hear nothing
