three vignettes on loss

I’m on the phone with my mother

& she’s doing this fun thing

where she unburies her trauma

& asks me if it’s still breathing.

Because I am the closest iteration she has

to a parent, I do what any

mother would do.

I let it live. I bury it again.

//

When my grandmother died I gained custody of my mother.

She packed her meager belongings in a duffel bag;

the childhood she couldn’t bear to release

photographs of blurry strangers

every one of her baby teeth.

I drove the duffel bag & my mother

to my apartment. I mistakenly cooked a dinner

that she couldn’t stomach so I ate it all myself.

My mother cried as she washed our plates,

waving goodbye over & over into the cheap dishrag.

I did what any mother would do.

I remembered.

//

They don’t tell you beforehand that motherhood

is just learning to grieve

in the least inconvenient way possible.

I was my mother’s mother

before I was ever her daughter.