Volume 12, 2012

Bittersweet

Daphne Solá

The summer that my husband died
I seemed to move
through a cloud of friends
asking, “What can I do?”
and the answer was, “Nothing."

But my children took hold
of the cipher I had become,
they functioned for me—
visiting banks and lawyers
clerks and directors—
and claimed that about every three hours
I would stand in front of them
and say,
“What do I do now?”

It was a surreal world
that slips and slides in memory
and does not hold still
to be recorded,
but what I remember best
is that those children pruned trees and
raked leaves,
and when Michéle went out and
bought a basket of peaches,
at the end of the day
we had pots of homemade jam
illuminating the kitchen windowsill.

                       march 29, 2010

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