Poetry

Suppose we were there for some event 

we did not want in on or did. Faith flung 

so hard, the cage I felt around me was 

no cage, just fear, in a summer-long wither; 

Give me memories as 

slow to leave as snails. 

In foreign    and perhaps 

fragile years    I’ll still be able 

In the evenings, we watched Jeopardy. 
Wore surgical masks once she got sick.
Before that my mother sent me to the store
for cigarettes all the time. Pack of Salem Lights.

We had to present proof for everything:  
My mother was born 
August 31, 1954. On that day 
inside the womb of a minute 
she burst from another woman’s life,