Tragedy, Once Removed
When the pain doesn’t belong to you personally
it’s difficult to know where to put it,
It defies dismissal.
I would like to rent a hotel room for it to spend the night,
Then, I could call you up and announce
it’s all ok.
But I can’t,
She was your friend and I’m not thirty,
I’m not driving four hundred sixty-seven miles to mourn.
You will be the adult standing graveside with your stinging heart,
You will hold your husband’s hand,
I will be
the only thing
I can be on your dark day,
Mother more than myself, mother more than your tears.
MARIETTA CALVANICO lives in Staten Island, NY, USA. After spending a bit more than two decades in advertising/marketing, she now works with her architect husband and has been able to devote more time to writing and music. Her poetry has appeared in The Bare Root Review and the damselfly press, and has recently been accepted for publication by Five Fishes and fourpaperletters.
