Marjorie Saiser

One last time I unlock the house where they lived and fought and tried again: the air of the place, carpet with its unchanging green, chair with its back to me. On the TV set, the Christmas cactus has bloomed, has spilled its pink flowers down its scraggly arms and died, drying into paper. At the round oak table, ghosts lean toward one another, almost a bow, before rising, before ambling away.

The adults we call our children will not be arriving with their children in tow for Thanksgiving. We must make our feast ourselves, slice our half-ham, indulge, fill our plates, potatoes and green beans carried to our table near the window. We are the feast, plenty of years, arguments. I’m thinking the whole bundle of it rolls out like a white tablecloth. We wanted to be good company for one another. Little did we know that first picnic how this would go. Your hair was thick, mine long and easy; we climbed a bluff to look over a storybook plain. We chose our spot as high as we could, to see the river and the checkerboard fields. What we didn’t see was this day, in our pajamas if we want to, wrinkled hands strong, wine in juice glasses, toasting whatever’s next, the decades of side-by-side, our great good luck.

You and I on the boat notice the print the whales leave, the  huge ring their diving draws for a time on the surface. Is it like that when we lose one another? Don't know, can't. But I want to believe when we can no longer walk across a room for a hug, can no longer step into the arms of the other, there will be this: some trace that stays while the great body remains below out of sight, dark mammoth shadow flick of flipper body of delight diving deep.

After my father died, my mother and my sisters picked the shirt, the tie; he had just the one suit. I left them to it, I didn't want to choose, I loved him all those years. They took a shirt from the closet, I don't remember which one, I'm sure he had worn it to church and hung it up again. They held a tie against the cloth of the shirt. They decided, finally. It's like that. Things come down to the pale blue or the white, or some other. Someone buttoned it over him, those buttons he had unbuttoned.