On Mother’s Day, I shun cards and don’t go out to brunch.
The Hollandaise just wilts,
And the champagne gets drunk by my mother.
But I stay home, somehow.
Memorial Day is the first holiday after the elementary school
Shooting. And, mother’s day weeping is my only fragment of understanding,
how the supposed holiday might drain their solace.
Some parents maybe hide under their blankets –in their child’s room or their own –
Shunning out the day. Others accepted party invites, and found that they weren’t themselves once
they got there. That they couldn’t even stay an hour, that the hamburger shook
on their paper plates.
I saw another father, on memorial day, walking to the elementary school. Breaking through the abandoned windows where kids last left.
Wanting to spend the hours repeating his child’s last movements.
She walked here, until she couldn’t any longer.
Others went to the barbecues like they were supposed to and drank too much.
One father
Started talking to the fireworks about the children that weren’t here, until the other mothers cradled his back
Telling him to go home now, it’s okay.
Others felt guilt at laughing, truly laughing, for the first time since that day.
Realizing too late that they are smiling, and that their smiles look like fangs barring.
Then they cry into their stripes, their twisted teas, their pool noodles,
Their ordinary coming together of memory.
A brother just shows his friends the foray, the entrance, of his house.
Her shoes used to line the foray, she used to annoy me
As we raced into the entryway,
Her shoes used to line the door, he’d say.
They don’t lie here anymore.
Maybe some pray to soldiers and ask how
To put bullets that left quickly, back into their casings.
How to put hatred back into boxes, to keep it closed,
Do they use twine, or maybe shoelace string?
And they can’t say they’ll write this poem tomorrow.
It’s now the poem of their everyday.
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