Cairn

We are to be death

To lay down

To be remembered by ash or ocean

We are to die

My mother is to die

To lay down

To be death

But not to be ash or ocean

As we are too coarse

She is too hard

And I am too ruptured

For anything but the weight we carry

So I will build a cairn

A mountain top stonepile, with her beneath

Four breathes high

each exhale another piece for the airless tomb

and every inhale, a pleading question dragged back down my throat

So I will know hurricane, beehive, window shatter, car crash, silence in my lungs

Constantly battling the slip of those questions she doesn’t need to hear

locked behind my white, crooked, levee teeth

Mom

Why couldn't you stop drinking?

Was it because you didn’t love us?

What is because you loved us too much?

Did you know I cried when your eyes turned yellow?

Why couldn't you stop? And I don't know, I wish I knew

Because now you’re waiting for this death

And I will not bury you

By fire or by soil

Only by the masonry breaths behind my ribs

Waiting to seep out

On my first breathe

I’ll contort my best side

To look like a model son

Look like nothing is wrong

I’ll hide behind my skin

So you can’t see holes you left

So you can look up

At what you have made

And not what you have torn down

on my second breathe

My sisters spine will straighten

And the dark ring around her neck from everything she carries

That ring

Will take from her shoulders

Like a six ton concrete crow

And it will writhe at the sky until it starves

becoming the moon under which you pass

On my third breathe

Your life will play on the vhs tapes my sister keeps in her dresser

I will watch you build my childhood home

Skipping every drunken blur

And the messy house

And the drinking

And the night you told me I was your favorite

in front of my sister

That is not for us now

On that day, I”ll hold the hands that made my meals

Not the ones that tipped bottles

And struck my father

On that day, I will hold the hands that reach for mine

And grip them until I choke out every guilty shard embedded in your marrow

And in that moment there will only be us left

On our last breathe

I will place my final stone on your chest

My last words

“Mom, I am so proud of you

I am so proud of you”

So proud to be your one good thing

Or proof of a life lived

Or just yours

And after you’re sealed

And gone

Then I'll sew my wounds back