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Cruel Choices

When my husband’s two grown daughters are in town, the three of them go to the movies, or play pool. Share dinner every night. Stay out late. I haven’t seen my stepdaughters since my son’s funeral in 2007. When people ask, I say nice things about the girls, as if we had a relationship. When people ask if I have children I change the subject. Or I lie, and say no. Or sometimes I put them on the spot and tell them yes, but he died. They look aghast and want to know what happened.Then I have to tell them about the cancer. Sometimes, when the older daughter, his favorite, is in town, and she and my husband are out together night after night, I wonder what it would be like if that was me, and my boy, if life was fair, and, rather than my husband having two children and I, none, we each had one living child. His choice which one to keep. Lately when people ask, I want to lie and say yes, my son is a basketball coach; he married a beautiful Iranian model with kind eyes, and they live in London with their twin girls who visit every summer; the same twins his girlfriend aborted with my blessing when my son was eighteen, deemed too young for fatherhood, and everyone said there would be all the time in the world.

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First published in ASKEW, 2016, Nominated for a Pushcart Prize, 2017

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Keeping Things Cold

I’ve hung on to what’s left over –
what you touched, what fed you,

taken stock of the refrigerator’s gelid interior,
sought evidence you were here.

Behind the yellow mustard,
and a half-squeezed tube of disappointment,

that Tiger Sauce you loved.
Best Before: Sept. 2007.

Some things I needed to keep.

Today, in the mail, an invitation.
Your Amy is getting married in the fall.

You’ll be gone eleven years.

Who invites the dead fiancé’s mother to her wedding?

She must have weighed the pros and cons as I do,
afraid I’ll put a damper on the day for those who knew you,

and burden those who ask: And how do you know the bride?

Afraid she’ll hurt if I don’t show.
Afraid she’ll hurt if I do.

I search online for the perfect gift,
compose my best excuse.

Tonight, I’ll make French onion soup (your favorite),
globules of butterfat dancing on its surface,

like I would have danced at your wedding.

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First published in Diode, 2018

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Unsolicited Advice to a Facebook Mom

Stop plastering the site with photos
of your strapping boy on the cliff
of manhood, pitching a no-hitter,
practicing guitar,

don’t publicize his tuxedo’d beauty
posing with his prom date,
or family jaunts to look at colleges for the fall.

Better to shield him from happenstance,
mistaken identity, the evil eye;
protect him from what you won’t imagine:
a drive-by.
a street race.
an overdose.
a dare.

Pass an egg above his body while he’s sleeping.
Make the mano fico over him with your fist.
Sew small mirrors into his clothes to reflect misfortune.
Tie a red string around his wildness.

When someone gives him a compliment, spit over your shoulder three times.
Then touch wood. 

Stop flaunting your boy’s shining face,
his sweetness, how he still
lets you kiss him goodnight.

Listen to me:
Like you, I was once besotted.

Don’t tempt the gods.

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First published in Literary Mama, January, 2017

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When You Think You’re Ready To Pack Up Your Grief 

Begin with his letterman’s jacket.
Bundle it together with regret.

Stack sorrow on top of his class ring,
interspersed with his hip hop cd’s.

Loneliness should not be smoothed over the heart, 
nor his childhood drawings folded in on themselves.

Don’t tuck his senior portrait in the side pocket.

Lay it beside delicate items, 
like feelings, face down; 
place tissue paper on top. 

Use additional layers to fold the last of him
in reverie, so it is engulfed. 

Use this approach for your own heartbreak.

When friends ask to help, don’t
spread the grief around. Keep it for yourself.

When the suitcase won’t close, don’t sit on it.
Don’t even try to shut it.

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First published in Gyroscope Review, 2016 Nominated for the Pushcart Prize.

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As My Son Lies Dying

I watch the hospice nurse give him another shot of morphine to ease the pain that even at the end will not let him be. I look into the faces of his panicked friends – not knowing where to put the grief, the incredulity. How can such an eager boy on the cusp of life be dying? Axed into wherever it is the lost boys go. As my son lies dying on a hospital bed in the living room, I do not know where to put my hands; his fiancée fluttering above him, his friends’ claustrophobic encircling. There is no way to prepare for the death of a child. The out of order-ness fucks with head, heart, and bones, each somehow more brittle than before. Impossible to look my dying boy in the face, I get into my car and drive away, fast as I can, hurtling down the 91 Freeway, putting distance between us. I remember his early birth, that new baby smell, his eyes bright and focused on mine, as if I could show him the way.

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First published in MacQueen’s 2024

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