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My Mother's Madness
The memory returns
every January, blurred
like rain on a cracked window.
The ground around us shifting
as narratives were bent and tilted,
Hades ascending.
You left with him
just before the witching hour,
silty loam and mud freezing solid for the winter.
I summoned Lazarus
for his official position on the matter,
gummed pomegranate seeds
and asked Orpheus for the handbook
on calling back lost ones.
This was no abduction, they cried,
no death but your own.
Nonetheless, every year
my hands grow numb, turn into
clumsy birds fluttering against
our burial, a frantic clawing
of fingers raked in dirt,
stained beyond recognition.
By dusk I curl up, rooted to the spot,
and wait for summer,
for a torrent of suns to unleash
and wash me clean.