Visions of Her

As I mentioned in class earlier today, I had the wonderful opportunity to present a short collection of poetry titled Visions of Her, which sheds some light on my own personal journey regarding grief and loss. In October 2015, my mother passed away unexpectedly, so I did a lot of writing. The poems that were the strongest were put together to make the collection which I presented at the Sigma Tau Delta 2016 Int'l Convention in Minneapolis, MN.

The poems presented at the conference can also be found in FIVE Poetry, an online journal published by FictionMagazines.com.

Here is one of the poems I presented:

My Mother’s Secrets

I.

My mother lived in the shadow of her death,

always forecasting black storm clouds over her head,

denouncing any chance for sunny skies.

She told me a secret before she died:
“The peculiar thing about a secret is that once you tell it,
it ceases to be itself anymore.”

She told me all her secrets—

in life and at the edge of her deathbed.

II.
Three weeks before you died, you told me
you were ready.

At 46, you were ready. Sure,

your life had been rough,
but I tried tirelessly to prevent you
from pricking yourself with thorns.

They were all stuck

growing inward like

an inverse rose.

III.
I remember your secret
about the gypsy-fortune-teller-girl.
How she threw down some dried-up old chicken bones
on a dusty pentagram-inscribed table
and told you she could read your future.
There was laughter

when she told you that in a past life

you had been a Chinese peasant worker,
but when she predicted you would die young,

you laughed harder,
even though she saw the fear in your eyes.

IV.

Some of your secrets belong
to a boy who cried every night,
a child who desperately tried to prevent
everything from falling apart.

His hands could never hold water.

You drowned him in a sea of suffering.
Your secrets are buried with him

in an unmarked grave.

V.

I had to let go of so much. You made me so

heavy and I wanted to be light.
You were supposed to be my anchor,
but instead you were the ball and chain
around my ankles,
drowning me once more again.

VI.

You were a woman who gave, gave, gave and gave.
Despite how much any of us sacrificed for you,

you gave back everything you stole.

Your most precious secrets were those that
only the backyard birds knew,
those who ate dried fruit and millet through winter,
and sugary-sweet-syrup in the summer.
Your secrets were carried away in the beaks

of ruby-throated hummingbirds.
Whenever I see them fluttering about,
it’s always you whom I think of first.

VII.

You were a woman with too many secrets.
I wonder how many of those
you guarded until death.
How many of your secrets were burned,
taken by the wind?
Now only the trees hear your whisper.
How many of your secrets are buried
under ashes in a silver urn?
I’ve opened it up,
but I’ve never found you—only dust.

VIII.

Your biggest secret was that you kept Death close,
like a dear friend to you.
He dug at your chest like a dog.
He haunted you at every doctor’s appointment,
hid beneath every scab.
He shared every cigarette with you,
every drink, every pill, every breath.
You got the best of him most nights,
but Death eclipses us all in the end.

IX.

I try to make sense of my feelings
in poetic rambling
because somehow admitting that your death freed me
makes me feel less guilty
if it’s done in the disguise of pretty words.
It’s not that I’ve been dishonest;
It’s not that I’m happy you are gone.
Yet when you died, your demons died with you.
And maybe by telling my secrets,
by writing myself,

like secrets,
these thoughts, these feelings,

all of it,
you, me, I, us:
we will cease to be anymore.