MEMOIR
Reading Poetry to Ghosts
Awaiting the Elysian Fields
I have a complicated relationship with God.
I used to be Catholic, but I don’t claim to be observant any longer. I’m in devotional limbo, just enough to call myself forgiven—not quite forgiven enough to be sure I’m going to get in.
Truthfully, were it not for Taylor, I would have punched my ticket years ago.
I know when the call was the strongest—the night her father and I lay with a bottle of Xanax between us, with her funeral the only concrete agenda we had left. Everything else we ever had has now returned to dust. All the promises life made us were simply ash, and a lock of her hair my mother had turned into a pendant for me to wear.
Over the years, I’ve tried to fold my hand and leave the table more than once. A betting woman would have placed the odds much higher; I wouldn’t be sitting here today.
Time started healing everyone except me. I haven’t spent the ensuing time fixing myself; I simply faded into the background as life passed me by. I have stayed long enough to see her father and his alternate ending come to fruition.
Another family, another daughter. I’m glad; he’s good people. I wouldn’t have let him ride the gondola back in with me if he had chosen…
