taping the baby
he is about to turn one
and they seem the same even after ten years
he is quiet and put-upon
speaking occasionally
mostly just raising an eyebrow
she calls him darling
and suddenly I go all the way back to 7 or 8
when she took care of us at my grandfather's funeral
my cousin and I were too young to go into the back room
and see our grandpa, dead and smiling, in a coffin
So she stayed out in the sanctuary with us
Light oak pews shining with polish
She sat in the middle of us girls in our velvet dresses and mary jane shoes
Tights cabled and itching us
She wore a blue skirt that flowed all the way down her long legs
She was a giantess
Her hand came down to hold ours from an unseen height
Pulled away every once in a while to wipe her eyes with a tissue
Weeping for a man she’d never met
She did not know yet
that we were a family uncomfortable with crying
But while my cousin looked politely away
I grew drowsy
Leaned into this new person’s shoulder and felt safe to close my eyes
Kept my legs kicking under the pew
My cousin says that later us kids rode in my grandma’s golf cart,
taking turns to speed down the straight line road of the trailer park
Mobile homes on each side of us colored and blurred in the dusk
There are even pictures of us with our brothers
Hanging off the roof of the cart upside down
Brown bellies exposed
Still I don’t remember
Only the church
And a woman we’d just met
and the loneliness of the rooms in the trailer
Running deep and unheard
Once she’d gone.
Oh Annie thats a sad one.
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