It seemed for a moment a long summer
When I realized it must be our only summer
It was the shortest in memory
Praying to a god I didn’t believe in
To keep what I never had
My life was everywhere and nowhere
Summed up in a real Rubbermaid container from 1992
In my mother’s basement
I mourn missing half poems and forgotten words
Feelings on the brink of extinction

I stand on the edge of ruin

and try to imagine the afterlife

my life

after

this.

My mother was beautiful 

Fucked up and forever lost in her own life

With a smile that stopped you 

And told you she’d figured out the world

She just didn’t know what to do with it

But laugh 

I knew one day she’d stop laughing 

That the weight would inevitably be too much 

And that beautiful lie of a smile 

I’ve always known would haunt me forever. 

She’d joke she did it all for the story

I knew 

She wasn’t joking 

And I think her biggest fear was running out 

Of stories, of time, of smiles, of versions, and of quotes 

For I also knew

She thought only of what she’d be then 

Ordinary

It terrified her.