Muriel

By Rebecca L. Morrison

She loved to write letters, and I wish

I'd written her more of them like she

always asked, brightly, slipping

a sheet of postage stamps across

the counter, maybe hoping I was

scared of her lonesomeness - widowed

lovelessness - and the time she fell

down the stairs to her basement.

For hours she survived with screams,

until Jesse, the Boy Scout next door,

heard her, and he got a certificate from

the Baltimore city police enumerating

his courage. Now I cringe at those hours

she spent shattered on concrete, those

hours I spent trying to crochet with

the hook she gave me, only to assume

she could just teach me again later.

And when the day came, prefaced by

the ninety-year slip from here to not

at all there, I stood weeping, dripping

with my mother's good emeralds and

diamonds, and the soggy grass clippings

and leaves that caked my black pumps,

and tried to read aloud her favorite poem --

"I am the only little black lamb -

The only one, that's what I am;

All of the rest have little white faces

I guess I'm a whole family tree of disgraces," --

until my father's grip on my shoulder

began to shake and sent me, scared

and slow like a letter tumbling

down the basement stairs.