Tethered. Wireless.

Oh, Carole .... these obsolete tears, grief unwashable. Seven years, however defined — revisions of home, dust and old thumbprints.

Airborne

I had the feeling I was in a cockpit, sitting at the rounded edge of my sister’s dinning room table, my feet on the floor. I could feel the phone receiver but could not see it, or my hand cupped around it. “We’ll meet on Lugo,” she’d said. My mother’s presence was evident, she mopping the floor, my mother never mopped a floor in her entire life!

“Not to worry about the kids,” I said to my sister, “they’re arses!” We’d laughed. “Mother, I’m to meet Carole at Lugo ….” Mother was grounded, in real time also died, buried, Carole airborne those vaporous letters at her funeral, and now me, clinging to a telephone cord.