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Maps
by Lonnie Howard
You appear in my dream grieving your lost son. You help me decipher a map. I wake up go to my desk to see if your obituary is still there. I reread it to make sure. You had three daughters, Dominique, Julia and Brita - no son. I want to go back to sleep, see the map again. Instead I remember 4th grade after school, waiting for your long fingers to finish practicing Clare de Lune and Fur Elise on the piano. Then we could run outside, ride our bikes down to the pond, catch turtles. In high school you took up smoking, wanted to be called Elizabeth, not Betty anymore. One December evening you came to my door with a book, insisted we walk in the dark, snow falling around us. We were walking through the Milky Way. You had just discovered Kenneth Patchen. We stood under the streetlight and you read aloud from The Journal of Albion Moonlight, snow dampening the page. You went on to art school in France, then Carrara to sculpt in green marble. You wrote from there when my mother died, said you would always remember me as golden. I lie awake now reading the obituary again: breast cancer, the three girls, all your accomplishments the art, the buildings you designed, the fullness of your 53 years. I can believe others are dead, but not you. I want to go back to sleep, see what map you are offering now. |
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