What Grieving Was

That was not the summer of aspic and cold veal. It was so hot the car seat stung my thighs and the rearview mirror swam with mirage. In the back seat the leather grip was noosed by twine. We were not poor but we had the troubles of the poor. She who had been that soft snore beside the Nytol, open-mouthed, was gone, somewhere, somewhere there was a bay, there was a boat, there was a scold in mother’s mouth. What I remember best is the way everything came and went in the window of my brief attention. At the wake I was beguiled by the chromium yellow lemon pies. The grandfather clock’s pendant of unaffordable gold told the quarter hour. The hearse rolled forward over the O’s of its own surprise.