Even In Death - excerpt

1
loss

I realize now
the permanence of loss.
a quicksilver melancholy swims
across my eyes
for every second
that has died
in the time before your death.
I lament
the questions I never asked.

I remember
that same melancholy
every time we said good-bye.
It was as if I knew
my favorite aunt would be the first
to go.


2
the idea of ancestry

Looking through pictures of you
I tried to make a collage of your life
to stand beside your casket.

I was sixteen.
I noticed then that when you were sixteen
we looked alike.
Your pictures
were of my own life
as it would have been if
I’d grown up in your time.

how striking, how eerie
the photographs of the little girl
with the press-and-curl bangs
playing on the swing set--
myself at six years old
in black and white

©2000 Tiffany Gholar