Midnight in Paris
Talcum powder
ground finer than ash
day of my father’s
funeral: proffered
to me
by his traitorous girl
friend: what he had kept
on his bathroom shelf
for twenty years
after
my mother’s death
and I — why — did I turn it
down? As though to own
it were to own her
calcified
remains? And with his—
now newly in the ground
now, not to own it
is to own regret—
the ghost body — its
cobalt blue the color
of grief that I said no
and when I called to say
yes
she had already thrown it away.
A relief to her, release to her.
Here in lines, let me preserve
what I had meant to
take.
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