Her Name Was Ruth, She Hated Her Name by Jenifer Wills

Photographs haunt me
every October. Souls reaching
through eyes that never
blink, hands frozen in gesture.  What
is it your fingers are hiding
in that tiny steeple?

I’ve written a hundred poems
on the subject of my mother’s death,
but have I mentioned
the last thing she ate?

Macaroni and cheese, against
the doctors wishes because, you know,
how morphine slows.  Have I ever written
it exactly so?

Did I tell you how she
looked surprised?

How she gave him
a glance from the corner of her eyes, then
vomited the blood on which she would choke
to death?

He tried to catch her
as she fell, but her skull smacked the wood
as she died, still beautiful even in sickness
at age fifty.

She was thrown by my brother’s hands
into the Pacific Ocean.

I’m going
to walk into the photographs
of those troubled enough
to have loved me, strolling a sea
of salt, saline
and ink
into horizon
of good intentions;
into the tiny steeple
of your fingers.




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[first read on LiteraryMary; used with permission of the author via Propaganda Press]