black whole memory
Daddy, “Enough already!”
Mommy, “What’s wrong with you?
That’s my mother who just died!”
They’re in the kitchen,
thinking they’re whispering,
as I lay on the sofa bed I can’t
open like that girl my age in that ad
on TV, my mouth smushed into my pillow,
so Daddy won’t hear me cry on this Yom Kippur,
September 29, 1952, ‘cause Grandma died
as the shofar blew, and Daddy’s being
such a meanie.
I wonder where she’ll go,
Grandma, ‘cause not heaven,
not with Grandma being so kind,
filling all those pushkies for charity,
even from her hospital bed, but dying
anyway, suffering and then dying, like
everyone else in this world, which
I can’t believe a real God
would allow.
He could end death.
So where is Grandma now?
Maybe in the scary pit I feel
in my tummy when I’m alone
in the dark, trying to sleep,
that big black hole
I hum to escape,
although maybe this life
is the dream and you die when
you don’t hum, when you just let go,
and fall down to where you came from,
to stay until you play your next role,
which I know makes me seem crazy,
which I hope I’m not, and also,
in case God is real, I hope He pretty
please proves it by explaining why
Daddy acts so mean to Mommy sometimes,
why good people die, and why I can’t stop thinking,
though Mommy says I should for my own good,
and when I reply, “But, Mommy, I have to think!”
she always says with a big smile, “
“I know you’re my daughter,
but you sure are one strange child.”