April 2009. © a-maryllis, All rights reserved


you expired in my mind
like old milk
so quickly
like tarred lungs
and lost breath
of a recluse social smoker
so slowly
like an explosion --
lightning speed
if anything should have exploded
it should have been your heart
so full of love
grand is an understatement

I wish he would have gotten to meet you
the man who has captured my heart for a lifetime
much like you did when I was a child
everyone knew I was granddaddy's little girl
you're the only one he can't meet but yet
the only one that I really want him to know

we came by an address of permanence
to foreboding non-believers
who will only scream for God on their deathbeds
but we didn't grieve standing above a box of bones
under new blankets of grass
because we know you aren't there
we looked up to the sky
and as a single raindrop fell
on my beloved's head in a sunshower
you blessed our upcoming matrimony
with the love a grandfather should

there is a picture by grandma's bed
you hold the world in your hands
somehow you knew back then that my world
would not be where I planted my feet
but it was where I was to go

my roots were to flourish from an acorn to a tree
a caterpillar to a butterfly
without a cocoon