Coming Home to Mother Yesterday
By Christy Call

I.

Kat wore a pale brown skirt
the color of her light tan tie
the color of her not black hair
the color of her mother's hands
when digging in the garden.
Kat wore a short pink shirt
the color of her rabbit's eyes
the color of her once white socks
the color of her mother's face
when digging in the garden.

II.

The garden was next to the fence
around the pool deck around the grill
that grilled the garden things
Kat’s mother gardened.

III.

Kat went to school in a uniform
that sighed with its tie
and the too tight shirt
and the too light skirt
that one day bled Kat home.

IV.

When Kat was home,
taxi gone and walking in,
Kat found her mother sit so still
beside the outside pool beside
the other outside grill
for hamburgers and steaks
and things her father grilled.
The sun was soft; she thought
she'd find her mother
where she thought
where she was not.

V.

Her mother was getting old,
getting tired of the shade,
getting tired of the sunscreen smell
of parents.
Her skin the smell of garden tools
was tiring sometimes.
But the toasting sound,
the sticking sound of sweat,
the smell of grill smoke
nothing like cigarettes,
but something lingering
that she could smell
back in the house,
on her clothes and hair and skin,
like back from a bar
with her husband
when they were fresh,
still having sex.
She liked to lay out by the grill
and listen to the meat
like fireflies in candles.

VI.

Kat called to her mother who sat so still—
I have something to tell you,
I had something important to tell—
who was asleep next to the grill
who was asleep against the deck
who was asleep beside the pool.
Kat called to her, to tell her I’m getting old.
Kat’s mother was sleeping with a sound
sticking in her ear, a sound
sticking on the grill
without her husband cooking there,
without her husband home from work
so early today, why hello my dear,
Why hello a friend of his,
with legs like matchsticks
sticking with the smell of sweat,
with eyes like green chlorine.

VII.

Back in the house, Kat’s mother’s hair
hot with the smell of searing steak
and grilled-up garden things,
her hand-skin sick with smoke,
her hand-skin shook by other hands,
has shaked so many other hands,
Kat’s mother shaking with the sight
of pale light skirts
blushing by the grill.

VIII.

Back outside beside the pool
Kat’s mother sat to sleep.
I didn't mean to
simply turned on the grill the two,
two of them were talking to
and then there was a walking to
and then there was a shaking hand
and then there was a shaking no
the color of a rabbit's eye
the color of some once white socks
the color of a mother's face
without the color wife.

IX

Kat doesn’t touch her mother’s hand
Kat smoothes her skirt instead.

Age ten: Christy Call writes her first poem. Rivers are involved. As are tears and face cracks. And just as she does not talk about tampons two years later, she tells no one. Maybe it isn't a poem after all. Eighth grade: She discovers that she cannot pronounce the word "urn." Urine. Urn. She simply cannot read Keats. High School: She reads Keats. College: She is accepted to Northwestern's poetry program, accepts and writes a novel. Graduate School: She studies creative non-fiction, but her professors believe she is concentrating in poetry. She blushes at the compliment, and in this inspiration, writes a poem about an urn.

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