The Bookstore

In the year of no, as in no way and no how, needing his advice as my cushion, my father suddenly died. Relatives swarmed our family home, comforting my stunned mother and sharing massive platters of turkey and ham brought in by the community, as we gathered our inner resources for the funeral. Disabled by grief, when we arrived outside the already-filled church, the congregation singing hymns from my childhood, my heart pounded, knees buckling. My mother reminded me that I was NOT to break down, weep so anyone could see, or, god forbid, throw myself over the casket like my bi-polar cousin did when her own father died, so I bit my lip, carried myself out of my body when the urge to humiliate my family grew too great, watching the minister exhort us to feel joyful, but he really meant those joy words for my father’s ears, picked off from the herd so quickly, gone to see his maker, bed left cold, garden fallow, while I was left wondering why I could shed tears openly over my dog’s death, or a husband’s abandonment, but not at the most important loss in my life thus far.

songs stifled —

whale bones lie silent below

the Wadi Hitan