For Holly Whitmore-Wiggerly (1974-2018)
I hadn’t known she was dying, that soon she would be
dead. There were so many other things inside my head.
Probably I thought of the same things I think of today.
The laundry, the children. This was before the dog.
A fog settled over my city though it is not known to be
a city of fog. She hadn’t seemed the type to die young.
At her first wedding, she’d asked me to wear a blue
dress.
I matched her twin though was nothing like her twin
except her twin and I both wanted to be poetesses.
That’s what her estranged father had called us.
Poetesses!
She and I had driven seventeen hours to meet him
and his partner, though it was before people used that
word.
Words come in and out of fashion. Perhaps like the
dead
moving through rooms. She sang most of the way. Slept
hard.
Sometimes I banged on the steering wheel and told her
to wake up, to talk to me, to keep me from driving off
the road. It was around Christmas time. Lots of lights
37draped on lots of crosses. I think there were more stars
back then. The way home was quieter. A gasp and a
heave.
Diet Pepsis growing warm in the cupholder. Her
second
husband, I recall, was kinder, but I can’t remember his
face,
his name. Only that on the phone she’d said something
about happiness, the end of dread. They were mostly
hymns,
her songs. I hadn’t known she would soon be dead.
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