The speaker was far away in Maricopa, Arizona when their mother passed away. Instead of flying back to see their mother's body, they stepped out onto their balcony in their nightgown to watch the stars. They could not write their mother's obituary as requested by their sister. The speaker remembers standing with their mother on what seemed like the ancient deck of a great ship, listening to the stars hiss into the horizon as dying lilac blossoms drifted up from a nearby yard.
The speaker was far away in Maricopa, Arizona when their mother passed away. Instead of flying back to see their mother's body, they stepped out onto their balcony in their nightgown to watch the stars. They could not write their mother's obituary as requested by their sister. The speaker remembers standing with their mother on what seemed like the ancient deck of a great ship, listening to the stars hiss into the horizon as dying lilac blossoms drifted up from a nearby yard.
The speaker was far away in Maricopa, Arizona when their mother passed away. Instead of flying back to see their mother's body, they stepped out onto their balcony in their nightgown to watch the stars. They could not write their mother's obituary as requested by their sister. The speaker remembers standing with their mother on what seemed like the ancient deck of a great ship, listening to the stars hiss into the horizon as dying lilac blossoms drifted up from a nearby yard.
When my mother died I was as far away as I could be, on an arm of land floating in the Atlantic where boys walk shirtless down the avenue holding hands, and gulls sleep on the battered pilings, their bright beaks hidden beneath one white wing. Maricopa, Arizona. Mea Culpa. I did not fly to see your body and instead stepped out on a balcony in my slip to watch the stars turn on their grinding wheel. Early August, the ocean, a salt-tinged breeze. Botanists use the word serotinous to describe late-blossoming, serotinal for the season of late-summer. I did not write your obituary as my sister requested, could not compose such final lines: I closed the pianoto keep the music in. Instead I stood with you on what now seems like the ancient deck of a great ship, our nightgowns flaring, the smell of dying lilacs drifting up from someones untended yard, and we listened to the stars hiss into the bent horizon, blossoms the sea gathered tenderly, each shattered and singular one long dead, but even so, incandescent, making a singed sound, singing as they went.