Ashes to Ashes, Anger to Dust
Mommy.
Where were you when I was little?
I needed you. Bedtime fables to remove my fears. Tickles for fun. Cheerful kisses dispelling tears.
I wanted you to hug me tight. Make the boogie man disappear at night.
Instead – I ate soggy, left-over food. Then sent to my mattress. Touched absent-mindedly, rude.
Strewn with tattered quilts.
My bed squirmed, without choice. Arms deprived of comfort. Gagged. Could not raise my voice.
Fingers of steely bone Offended me. Forced me to weep alone. He was the boogie-man.
Mother.
Where are you now?
When the steel-bodied truck tore your body apart in one screaming moment, did it tickle?
Does your cremated conscience unsettle you in the hard ground?
Does god scold you? An ironic sound.
Do worms kiss your ashen jar? Can you dream them away? Will reciting the 23rd Psalm keep your darkness at bay?
The Child frolicked and sang of your death when she heard.
Merry nursery rhymes. Laughed at every word.
Scrabble’d with your bony-remains. Basketball, into plastic urn, shot. Polka’ed at your funeral. Square-danced on your plot.
Hard-butter-bitterness
melting
in
the
cemetery
sun.
Lauren O. Thyme
originally published Soundings Magazine, 2/20/1992
Lauren O. Thyme is a spiritual and psychic counselor, healer, channel, lecturer, published writer and poet, professional astrologer, and spiritual pilgrim.
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