My Mother's Sister

I’ve studied Sylvia and Anne, beyond
the grave. I’ve studied you in the flesh, in my
dreams, and in bottles of medication flushed
down grandma’s toilet. I saw you speak to god that
day from the sidelines in my Barbie nightgown and
miss-angled bangs, as the freckled paramedic, your Happy
Days crush Richie Cunningham, took you away.

Half past ten waiting within the walls of uncertain
death, I lay upright bound in Khaleh Farideh’s worried
emotion. As she stroked aside kinky black tendrils, a saintly
vision in white struck my sight. Your hospital gown smelling of
your peculiar psychosis, your I.V dripping morphine to bore
stiff the emotions of a widowed mind, twenty-one years and
counting. You gave me a bag of rainbow-sprinkled cookies, a pencil
topped with a heart eraser, and a hug. You leaned in whispering,
I‘ll never die. These voices won’t allow me to.

The strollers in shoes not your own, arbitrate knowing
nothing. You know the transparent truth, exactly as you
imagine it. An esteemed doctor falling casualty to
domestic abuse. Trading retention with you, if it insured the
dictator of your marital incarceration death, would require
no second opinion.
Sylvia and Anne would harmonize; thoughts pertaining to you
are bullet-proof, calling to comprehension your liberal
undertakings clearly vaccinated from any assassination of
the anti-mediocre contemplations that your man-trampled
illness inspired.