Glass: A Journal of Poetry Volume One Issue Two       

Kathleen Boyle

O Nonni
 
Then the Pope was dying too
and I thought of you all day. Such
a holy man you said again
and again after seeing
him at Candlestick. In pictures
he was shrunken as you were
that afternoon I found you lying
on your kitchen floor, clawing
at nothing with toes and fingers,

wailing. A few weeks later
you were dying and I
was in Egypt. Anytime
now said my dad across continents
and oceans. She's like a small
alien my sister emailed. The day
you died I wandered yellow
streets of Coptic Cairo, stopped
in every church to light candles.
Each flame flared up then pulled
back from its match. The saints stared
past me through black
eyes. Now I live

in your house, go days without
thinking of it or even you. Then
some Wednesday I return from work
to your smell of roses, hotcakes, girdles,
palms from Palm Sundays past and
all I want to hear is the voice
that goes with this smell. There is nothing
in particular I want to tell you, there
was already this space between my lapsed
life of men, drinks, books, planes,
and yours of dentures in a fuzzy glass. Yesterday

coming up the back stairs
there it was again by your second stove,
the one you'd use to fry
fish on Fridays. And I would pray
a hundred rosaries to sit once more
with you at your kitchen table as you sip
coffee, two hands on your daffodil mug.