Breadcrumb #587

MEGAN WILDHOOD

We are asked to peel potatoes.
We are told to put the skins,
which my sister can produce in one
long spiraling strip, into a dented metal bowl

 between us. We will save them for soup.
I think. I do not think the popular thing is true;
death is not a part of life.
(My sister finishes flaying her spuds, bounds off

 into the unmowed yard.)
It is harder than that;
It is not as if life and death amicably separated
like an out-of-love couple so that they may find 

more satisfying companions.
(Dad reaches inside for breath enough to call his girl back
but she’s been eagerly received by our land’s high, hard tresses,
blonde like Mom was even up to this day last year.) 

I will not outlive my grief.
When Mom laughed, she laughed from her soul,
they said. I remember it like that now.
Her grief howled like wind in tunnels, too. 

I will not outlive my grief.
But maybe it is not impossible to live;
extremes can exist back to back.
I give you the zebra, I give you grief, I give you a naked potato 

in accidentally sliced fingers. Dad is still looking into where
his girl disappeared, past it now, to the yard of stones
showing sayings. Death is a part from life, he whispers,
(grazing the pane with his fingertips). It will always be as hard as that.

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