I have come to accept
that there is beauty in frailty--
a frayed and fragile frame
extending her hand where blue veins road
through thinning skin,
making evident the terrain of flesh we really are--
a faltering voice,
that falls through the kindness of a struggling smile.

I guess I was biased
from the time we scrubbed yellow walls
and soaked tobacco covered screens
between bouts of silence and the
occassional series of hacking coughs.
I saw two paintings I had made in grade school
pressed between a stack of albums
that gapped years in her closet.
I waited for a story as we sifted and sorted,
Something I had forgotten of myself.
She always had stories.
Instead the silence persisted,
screamed and sctratched through cobwebs and dust.

But I must take my time to reconcile,
before the shuffling wind comes to snatch
the seed that shackles us to life,
to flesh and bone,
and memories of home.
Sometimes we leave before the walls are aware,
and over each cherished place,
death is dust,
and each loving face,
the grandest sunset.

Mother sometimes belts out a song;
Even more rare,
she'll tell me of a daughter
who loved to listen.