I was in the place between places,
feet waiting to leave the ground. There was no holy beckoning
except the noon sun that shone through a crack in the door
to the room where my mother was frying chicken.
 
            Where she walked in and out of sight
half Baptist, half Catholic, singing a song that I took
to mean she was done with me and who
we were with each other, bristlecone pines in a high wind.
 
The night nurse sat beside her. The aides in white came to bathe her body,
a temple with all the candles blown out, the charity box empty.
 
            She had her hand on my arm, trying to hold me back,
breathless. Turn around, she said, back to where you came from.
My pink pearl once hid beneath her dress like one eye opening.
In the sea of pre-birth, I got used to her voice —  
 
you are my sunshine, my only sunshine — and the tide inside her
lifted us both. My hand on her forehead. The sheet pulled aside,
 
            she was just about to translate into paradise as soon
as they could get her pressure stockings off, having ridden to the peak
of the wave and set to launch. I watched as far as I could, released
from the fray of her arms and left on shore.
 
            Now I know the heft of sorrow carried like a child
upstairs away from the party. There’s nothing ahead but sleep.
All the laundry done. The pantry organized. Peaches cut into quarters
and bobbing in a bowl of ice water, peanuts shelled and boiling.
 
Red rays of my mother’s hair streaming off the ends of the earth.

—Arlene DeMaris

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