Shadows Ripple like Memory

Nieces and nephews placed rocks on your grave, small ones, barely pebbles. “Where is she 

now?” little Janie asked. Aunts and uncles set larger stones shaped like obelisks. “I can’t

believe she’s gone,” cried Aunt Sue. “I can still taste her laughter in cakes she baked for our

family celebrations. I can still hear her love in words read to grandchildren on her knee.” Each

rock cast shadows, you as a child in a sky blue dress adorned with cotton candy clouds, your left

knee bandaged, you holding Bobby's hand as softly as an Easter chick with a broken wing, you

in high school wearing a Mary Quant mini, foulard in sixties psychedelia, a Twiggy blunt cut,

your eyes strained with crow's feet from newscasts reporting how many died today in Nam, you

in a midi wedding dress, post college, the dress fringed in pearls, a defense against chauvinistic

irritants, your Granny-glassed eyes defiant, you in a business suit of gray days, earning 70 cents

on the dollar of your male colleagues, you in a hospital gown as pale as roadside birdsfoot, tubes

growing from your body like lichen tentacles. I heard the doctor's words, a garland of

deadheaded blue irises and you were gone, your shadow rippling across us like memory.

a closet door partially closed

light seeping in like perfume

from old garments remembering