Pittsburgh
A creased wedding photograph of a woman.
A Mass Card when she passes.
The facts of her life
support no further conclusions.
About the necessity of ambulances.
The man who held
her in his childish embrace.
She is the silence that avalanches down to
a mute son with too many mothers.
Not enough uncles to help put the pigs back
into the sties.
On Friday night after the football game.
Teenage boys lick the lipgloss
off of the head cheerleader.
She is the fact of a ride up to the cemetery.
Her grandfather tumbles down with the cicadas.
She is the silent face of
a younger brother who collapses.
The folding chairs and carries them to the
attic full of trunks and shoe boxes.
The shoes from her other life.
She is the silence, a crimson wedge.
Cheese rind made of ash
from the steel furnaces that
soot the city.
We can say no more.
Published on The Laundry Line, 18 March 2025
