Lost
19 Saturday Jan 2013
19 Saturday Jan 2013
26 Thursday Apr 2012
Tags
bean sprouter, Christmas, elegy, family, good, grandma, grief, home, loss, love, NaPoWriMo, NaPoWriMo2012, poetry, writing
Prompt: Elegy
The Day After Christmas
As I sit here and think, the tears come.
The day after Christmas, it’s hard for me
not to think of you.
Melancholy memories.
The little things.
The mung bean sprouter
you made
with an awl
+ hammer
+ plastic dishtubs.
(I never knew how
spoiled my palate was
because of you.)
Your never-ending
ingenuity for reusing things.
(Which I have inherited,
I think,
though my attempts
are amateurish in comparison.)
Funny how we never really spoke, much.
I guess we didn’t have to verbalize.
I was a little odd.
And you let me be.
Showing me what you could teach me,
But letting me be free
To be
Me.
I remember the first time I got
spitting angry at
another person
bully
big
boy
neighbor.
He jumped into your
newly-seeded garden bed from above,
from the stone wall,
leaving 2 deep impressions of
his feet.
I remember the rage, the red.
I don’t remember what happened afterward,
But I remembered loosing words at him
that a 6-year-old shouldn’t know.
I ran after him, but I don’t
remember
if I caught him,
for his legs were 2 or 3 years older
than mine.
I do remember never seeing
him
or his whiny little sister
after
that.
You may not have bought me things
or “provided,”
But you were
my caretaker
my constant
my home
my unconditional
my… “parental unit”
(psychologically speaking)
I rebelled against you as a teen.
And then you were gone.
And I never got the chance to say
sorry
or thank you
or I love you.
But.
I know now I didn’t have to.
You already knew.
Because.
we didn’t have to speak
to communicate.
(That’s why I knew
that first time,
the stroke.
I knew (without seeing),
I knew (without knowing)
before you fell
and was there
to catch you.)
Your last conscious memory
of me,
You thought I was that little 6-year-old who
sang songs all day and
drew pictures and
followed you around
cooking
gardening
(How I loved summers with you.)
You talked to me like I was that girl
On Christmas
(or was it Christmas Eve?)
I remember you now
like that
In your garden,
singing,
with the wet white towel
on your head
to keep cool
in the bright afternoon sun.
And you’re smiling,
handing me a ripe tomato
to eat
while I help you
pick the rest.
For my grandma, who was always there when I left for school and when I came home. I still miss that.
More info on NaPoWriMo2012
(National Poetry Writing Month 2012)
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