The Book of the Duchess

In an untitled folder

Right on the desktop

I found my mother’s poetry

There was a hesitation

In choosing

To read it

My mother spent her life

Arranging photographs

On a mantle

That was never dusted

She held sentiment

For torn t-shirts

Broken VCR’s

Dented cans of crinkle-cut carrots

Ingredients for a peach cobbler

She’d never make

Everything meant something

Except for those closest to her

We were unable

To carry meaning

Because we wouldn’t

Stop moving

Despite our best efforts

We could not empty ourselves out

Sufficiently

And so placing things

Within us

Was too complex a process

My mother saw me

And wished that I could hold

All the anger

She had left over

From a childhood spent

Being asked to solve

Her father’s absence

As angry as I got

It was never enough

To remove the quantities

That poisoned her

I was not her child

I was broken dialysis

I was her missing veins

I was her stale sugar cookies

Clicking on her first poem

I was struck

By how much

She let out

If I ever suspected her

Of being creative

I assumed it would be

In a visual sort of way

Paintings hidden in the garage

With red and black blotches on them

Religious undertones

Or simple villages

That spoke to a dream she had once

And couldn’t shake

Instead here were these poems

These long poems

These epics

No word or description spared

More said in one piece

Than she’d spoken to me

In the last year of her life

That might be

Why dialysis

Is on my mind

That might be

Why suddenly

I think in poetry

I am no creative myself

But my first husband

Encouraged me to write

And so I wrote

And as I wrote

I wrote myself dry

And never filled up again

As therapy, it was helpful

But it didn’t bring about

A sense that I had any

Artistic contributions

To deliver

I was not surprised

That my mother

Hid her poetry

But I was surprised

At how much of it there was

Over a hundred poems

In that one little folder

Locked away in a computer

We used to play solitaire on

As children

The computer my father

Sat quietly at night-after-night

Having an affair with a woman

He would eventually leave my mother for

Only to travel to France

And find out that it was all a scam

He came back

On a Tuesday

My mother made him pot roast

And we all ate together

As though nothing had happened

Even though my mother was now

A woman marked by her distrust

Of any man

Who would claim to love her

I searched through the work

For any disclosures

About what she was feeling

At that time

The poems began

Around the time

My father brought

The desktop home

From a surprise trip

To CompUSA

I don’t remember

My mother ever using

The computer

But the timestamps

Are from either late at night

When we were all asleep

Or early in the morning

Before getting us ready

To go to school

The times are more illuminating

Than the words

Because the words

Detail the same thing

Over and over

A story of a girl

Going to a lake

To look for a boy

The boy never arrives

Or he does

But he’s different

He’s changed, somehow

And the girl asks him

Why, why has he changed?

In some poems

He explains to her

That’s he grown

That it’s aging

It’s natural

That she’ll change as well

In some of her poems

He stands there, silent

Refusing to give her

The answers she craves

She beats on his chest

Begging him to explain

How he could show up

In this way

Like a stranger

Like a statue

She’d never noticed

Erected on the shores

Of a lake

The poems where

He doesn’t show up at all

Are not the shortest

Quite the opposite in fact

Her protagonist waits and waits

And so the poems go on

And in them

She, the girl, or my mother--

Who knows?

Who can say

Where author ends

And character begins?

In those poems

The girl traverses

Her history with the boy

With the lake

All the things

That look like water

The behavior of the surface

The tension after the ripples

The displacement as she places her hand

Down a few inches

And a few inches more

Why would my mother

Go on and on

About a lake

That only exists

In her mind?

Why wouldn’t she

Write about something

That means something

To her?

She didn’t grow up near a lake

There is no biography here

No clues to a past

No detective work

To be done

Why spend so much time

Living in repetition?

Staying up so late

Getting up so early

Just to write the same poem

Unless there was

A parable there somewhere?

What am I meant

To learn

From something

I was never meant

To read?

The invasion

Of a dead woman’s

Privacy

Does not disturb

My surface

It’s the futility

Of the invasion

That rankles me

When I was thirteen

I came home from school

And my mother

Was sitting on the edge

Of my bed

My open diary

In her lap

‘So,’ she said, almost pleased,

‘This is where you keep it all’

Did she mean the anger?

Did she mean the anger I felt towards her?

Did she mean all the things

I never said

Sitting at the dinner table

Chewing on pot roast

That tasted like submission

Not just to a man

Or to forgiveness

But to what life demands?

My mother and I were

Adjacent countries

Where any alliance

Is only one misstep

Away from being a war

Proximity precludes

Any real sense of peace

I spent a week

Reading each of her poems

Re-reading a handful

Dissecting one or two

The one that I nearly memorized

Featured the girl at the lake

Never mentioned the boy

If you hadn’t read

The other poems

You wouldn’t know

There even was a boy

But you know she’s waiting

She talks about not

Knowing how to swim

As she steps into the lake

She doesn’t say she’s sad

She doesn’t think of heartbreak

She describes the velocity

Of a Sunday

The way it comes up

From within you

And sits in your chest

Not how a Tuesday would do it

Tuesdays sit on your shoulder

However heavy

They might be

They do not weigh you down

In the poem

The girl walks

Into the lake

Right up to her waist

And then the words end

They stop mid-line

And this enrages me

Because what am I to