If We'd Cried, I Would Have Mentioned It
Karen Skolfield

I’ve realized I don’t keep much
of my mom around. An ornate bottle,
a serving platter, one picture
on the side of the fridge.
We look a lot alike. Everyone said so 
at the funeral, which is a strange
time to say that: You look so much
like your mother, who is now dead.
We were the same height for a long time,
and then she shrank, and shrank
some more, and I knew she was leaving.
Short fingers. Farsighted. I’m graying
the same way she did. She was in the ground
by the time we arrived in Tennessee.
On a hillside where it looked like no one
had ever been. Even the new dirt looked
like old dirt. Cold, but only Tennessee cold.
I was six months pregnant, and I wore
a maternity vest designed just for funerals
when you are six months pregnant.
Dark on dark, a pocket for what grows inside.
A little zipper that gave my hands
something to do. My brothers said
I looked nice pregnant, and I believed them.
We milled around the dry December grass,
churning the spent seed heads, and talked
about mom as if she still might show up
with a baked ham, some warm bread.
We were a family raised to believe
in things unseen. Just the one tombstone.
Pink granite. Or maybe it’s called red granite,
but it looked pink, and we talked about it
for a long time, the area famous for its quarry.
Hearts and her name, precisely carved flowers.
What I wanted to tell my siblings was that
the wrong parent died. I thought this over
and over, and found some strange comfort there.
Maybe they thought the same thing.
My oldest brother’s girlfriend said
“Isn’t it amazing what they can do with lasers,”
and I told her about my surgery.
No more glasses. Until then,
I’d let everyone wonder what miracle,
what divine hand, had touched my eyes.

©