Once Before and After.

when momma had fallen,
she took tommorow to her grave.

the hospice she had added to
was unmarked like her poppers grave.
we all longed for daisies to grow
just so raindrops might know shes there.
heaven never sent them.

the hill we buried her on
was accompanied by a dying elm tree,
it hungrily mirrored the hilltops
own falling stature and appearance.

in the summer we decided
to hang a wooden swing from the tree;
the unsturdy branch we set it on,
never creaked or moved. but,
the tree; listless like its death
would crawl through the mud
as we swung.

that fall,
we stopped swinging...

we began listenning to the sky.
in its unwavering shelter
we found solitude from the loss.
apon its steam pressed fog fabric,
clouds would cross,
freeze framing in the messy stitches.
birds would fly by
in insect like patterns, weaving the gossip
of the woods into the ever changing
pattern of our crochet empyrean.

the orchid wrapped breeze
would come from the west
and consume us.
sometimes falling over when it reached us.
laying down in the smooth grass beside us
as if it were some gift from our sky.

some days it would rain.
and we would watch the blood of the world
fall down onto us, slowly it would
start to seep through us.
passing our aestetic qualities, then our skin...
and finally our soul.
its as if we were some human sieve catching
infections so that the world wouldnt drown
in its own sorrow.

momma would be proud.

that spring, after a winter that  
seemed like it hadnt cared to be a reaper at all.
we noticed the swing on our elm tree
was swaying in an almost human assisted manner.

I was quite curious to the phenomenon.
my sisters too, became infatuated with it.
once moving,
their eyes would dart over in the directon
of the swing. bright and gleaming,
craving the pendulem like movements.
sucking up every little detail of the sight.
the small little indents in the wood seat,
that pulled, straining on the ropes
lashed to the tree.
engraving every smooth motion into the bark.

we came to love its tatter,
its irregular sunshower sort of love.
it held us through the bloom,
and carried us to the desert.

by summers finite author and publisher
we came to agree, that our mothers spirit
had nestled itself on the workbench seat
and dollar store ropes.

as the days grew hot,
we began to paint,
so as to escape the suns critical eye.
on the backside of our aptereous craned hilltop.
we pressed memories in stardust.
making fine smoothe whisps of mementos
in the photograph of our minds.

we would dance the contours of our mothers face
into the matted kentucky blue grass,
spilling our ichor on the corners;
to make the picture vintage.
then washing it over with the funeral ceremony
that seemed ages ago.
it turned black and white. like a polaroid
enkindled in the sun.

some nights, the fireflies would line up in the mist,
as if strung to the sky, like a giant
mobile for our little hill.
they would drape themselves in the liquid
discharging glow of the moon.
then confess, spilling their own secret glow.
encircling us with their hush-hushes.
in their enigmatical dance, we became hidden.
and the world around the hill was lost.

that fall was brief, and grimm.
mother swung so often, that the dirt
circling the tree and her grave loosened to a
scary insecurity.

the world started to get closer and closer
to our little hill. and everyday,
we felt alittle smaller.
our dying elm was no longer dying.
it began to wilt, and corrode from the inside.

our hill would bend farther and farther over
everyday. slowly sucumbing to the encompassing
concrete, and blacktop hardships of the growing world.
we too felt as if we were being bent.
the cosmos was finally sneaking up
on our little universe.

winter came.
the sky turned grey, and the mirror
in our eyes reflecting our perfect little hill
dissapeared.

yesterday...
mothers grave  fell out the bottom
of our scythe like hill...
the sky began to cry.
and we - were as wells.

when momma had fallen,
she took tommorow to her grave.

and slowly, then suddenly we had faded away.