Unexpected Letter
In a
dream you swear you
never
dreamed, your mother
is
writing a letter left-handed
on
plain paper in a cursive you
must
work to decipher—so unlike
the
perfect hand in the letters
she
wrote you. Now an urgent
message
has shaken her ability
to
hold a pen, or she has suffered
a
stroke and expects you to see
the
chaos, to translate her pain, or
you
missed the point of every letter
she
sent: her calm, cheerful text
punctuating
the years while
this letter is
the one
she
intended all the time.
So
you focus on each loop that
tries
to be a vowel, each chunk
of
ink that wants to be a word
since
she will not speak again
and
this broken verse is for you.
Laurel Smith lives in Vincennes, Indiana, and happily participates in projects to promote literacy and the arts. Her poems have appeared in Natural Bridge, New Millennium Writings, Tipton Poetry Journal, Flying Island, English Journal, JAMA: Journal of the AMA; also in the following anthologies: Mapping the Muse, And Know This Place, Visiting Frost.
Laurel Smith lives in Vincennes, Indiana, and happily participates in projects to promote literacy and the arts. Her poems have appeared in Natural Bridge, New Millennium Writings, Tipton Poetry Journal, Flying Island, English Journal, JAMA: Journal of the AMA; also in the following anthologies: Mapping the Muse, And Know This Place, Visiting Frost.