Waiting

by Bobbie Jean Huff

Originally published in the New Quarterly Issue 173

After, there’s no sign of you.

Gone: your shoes, your white dresses and

silk scarves, the tiny hats you perched

on your head.

Your childhood pony drawings, your

comic books, novels and piano music.

Your mother’s beaded purse,

the emerald bracelet made

(your father claimed)

by prisoners on Death Row.

And a clutter of silver medals:

Jesus on his cross, Joan before she burnt,

and, with one hand on her heart,

The Queen of Heaven.

How did you manage such timely erasure?

Did you haul the bags out in the night,

one by one, so no one would notice?

Did you think that without evidence

you’d lived, there’d be no

sorrow at your passing?

I remember watching your lips move

as you prayed to a god you no longer

believed in,

and how you cried when you knew it

was nearly time to go. And I remember

the morning you were finally ready, when

you lay still—so still it fooled me—as if you

couldn’t bear to disturb the atoms of air

above your head

But in the end you’re everywhere!

I see you in your grandson, the tendrils of

hair tangled around his ear,

the pink star-shaped hand he waves

above his crib. I hear you in my brother’s hoot

when someone gets too close. I find you

there—just there—in winter’s glittery sky,

and in the spring, leaning against the shed

and smiling at the ragged purple tulips

you planted one autumn before an ice storm.

And I remember how when I said It’s too cold.

They’ll never come up,

you said, Wait. Just wait.