Memorial

Anniversary of My Father's Death

by Mimmo Iasiello
 

It's late.  I sit next to you in the tortured

house of my childhood, sipping the gin

you taught me to drink, watching you

refill your glass for the fifth time tonight.

We listen to the staccato pecking

of the clock, our thoughts

a few beats above sleep where everything

melds into one fluent grief.  Fifteen years ago

I sat in a similar manner,

the walls of the hospital blaring

an obscene white, the lifeless rag

of my father lying still in the bed.

I watched how his eyes slipped from blue

to black, listened how his strangled breath

rose and fell in waves of congestion.

I remember holding the thin skeleton

of his hand, his grip lessening as the rhythm

of his heart straightened out

and relaxed.  Your hand is equally thin,

the fingers fine like breadsticks.

You are no longer that woman thrown easily

into fits, fed on anger, explosive.

For the first time in my life

I see you as one who has waited for a moment

that has never come;  one filled

with imperfection and regret, you, this woman,

my mother.