by Jennifer Ruth Jackson
This is the door to your mother’s voice.
Don’t open it at work or ink and mascara
will smear together on your paperwork.
This is the hall that smells of her cooking.
Sounds of pots and running water make
you want to find the kitchen… and her.
This is the quilt as warm as her hug
you wrap around yourself as the snow
pummels windows you want to shatter.
Black lines in the newspaper reduce
her technicolor life into a logline.
You only wake to remember she’s still dead.
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