Peachy blur welcome. Masked mouth—mind of its own. Filmy rustle of wings, late lira’s soul. There is only one gathering at the funeral home. They call it a wake yet she gets to sleep. Didn’t want an open casket. No way to say so now. Hard to breathe beneath poppy & sesame seed. Little black dress. No makeup. No point. We are the best-dressed, but she will outlast me—can’t crease her clothes. Why must we wait in line to watch a shell…
The boy lost his Nonna. I’m here to comfort my own. I feel like I’m rubbing it in somehow, but both are in the same room. A tap on the shoulder, I turn around. Blue eyes wrinkled, cloth-mouth moves. A ladybug on my back? Sour peach crumb of sugar thought black dress was its mother’s spot, latched on. Death does that sometime: steals from him so I can appreciate my own. I make a silent show; guilty—boy is my age. Mom gets the tomato off, a bruschetta pearl toppling over the plate, lost. I pick up rose-wound boots; there is too much death here already. I wonder if he’s watching. If he’s crying. “It means luck,” mom says like I’m the one who needs it. I want to fill the casket with ladybugs. I say nothing to the boy, smile sympathetically. Too bad he cannot see it.
In home’s apple walls, white-skinned, six seeds, plants hang from hooks; I do not look. My grape-strung room, little worlds in wall-pockets. Reminds me of Nonno’s vino, bees flocking to sticky, bitter, indigo barrel. I pray he stays longer. Little black dress on chair’s bent back, skim Romeo and Juliet for class. A clicking above me, a large shadow jolting from stucco to stucco. Stops. Above vino-shades tapestry—a ladybug, blush sugo on penne. No dalmatian dots—couldn’t have been a day old. Call dad to bring it outside, scooped into man-hand, bitten nails that mock me. Open my book to dog-eared page.
Last warm day, I sit on tall brown box housing cushions, write a poem about eggs and music. Ladybugs congregate on brick wall above me, sunset’s pinks & oranges & reds. Even autumn colours flee from fall. I make a promise to write about them next, watch them fly away. One clips my nose.
The ladybugs migrate to a place that even the luckiest cannot find. A world inside a raspberry, in the warm glow of curtained sun, mushroomed houses and leafed umbrellas, where fairies and sprites wait to restore their luck. Before they hibernate beneath soft knitted snow, they are held by the wings and dipped in strawberry smushed by fairy’s feet. Then the little sprite’s swim in blackberry ponds and dance over each lady’s back. Bathe in the last fall of sun-gold rain and settle on a fallen cherry petal in groups. Pixie-woven blankets of banana peel to keep them warm until slumber lifts and ladybugs fly to the next world.
Back to me.
