The city remarked in a careless way

‘You left something here when you went away; I saved it for you.’

She wears my mother’s ghost like a shawl. 

It's getting wet in the showers of her hair. She drapes it over a church roof to dry. 

The city is tenacious, buttoned into her boots. 

She hands me grief in a tangled skein. I don’t even know how to hold it.

“What do they teach children anymore?”

She holds one end. I pick and pick and pick. 

When she is near she folds me in the damp humidity of wool, 

her heart a kiln that smells of clean fire. 

A part of me hoped that she would rock me like a cradle,

knowing full well that I am not her only child.

She is busy laying tracks, she is busy running numbers,

she is busy inspecting trains, she is busy at the till.

I pass the time in corners where my memories gather dust: 

a pond with ducks, a bookshop. A sidewalk glazed with rain.

She finds me on a bench.

”Haven’t seen you since the funeral.”

I know, I know.

”Not so much as a goodbye.”

I say I’m sorry, because it's true.

Love, like a postcard, has a front and a back. 

On one side is a wish that things were different than they are.

“I was an eggshell you thought you outgrew.”

A sudden wind plucks the shawl from atop the church steeple.

It curls into a figure with a bright face 

who putters about town, doing little errands.

The city shakes her head. 

‘Never could keep hold of that one.’

Bywords, 2024