My Mother’s Mother

We are going to a funeral. It’s how it happens in movies except the cloth seats of my mother’s car are covered in dog hair. There’s crumbs epoxied to the center console by dried Coke Zero and I’m not crying. Instead I sit passenger seat noticing. I sit staring at all of it while she sings the words to The Funeral by Band of Horses on repeat. It’s that same song over and over building and falling reaching and withdrawing and I’m thinking to myself this thing could really use a wash. My brother and sister are silent and my mother is screeching the lyrics while her 4Runner wobbles on I-85. The way the tires falter beneath me when she hiccups reminds me of the horrible creaking of a carnival ride. Like something really terrible is about to happen to you but you’re strapped in. The air is thick with dog. The music is loud. The hair’s on my hands. The car’s giving out. My grandmother is lying dead in a casket and I can’t cry when I’m in front of her. I showered six times that night but couldn’t rub away the dirt—all the hair I swallowed trying to inhale her life back into my body.

Autumn of the Mind

It’s a potluck.

Whatever that means. 

I’m having trouble with

etymologies.

Do you know that the structure of the thing makes it?

I’m thinking decomposition,
Something unraveling in the desert. 

I’m thinking

S

O

R

R

O

W

The Chinese characters for leaf and fire.

Pass the salt.

Next to one another, they read

Autumn.

I can’t remember what I was supposed to bring.

When I close my eyes,

I think of mice and marmalade.

That one children’s novel.

Milk and cookies.

That kind of thing.

Take the character for mind and put it under.

Autumn of the mind.

Just like that.

You’ve got it.

Now reach for something across the table.

I’m spelling it out.

On your palm.

S-O-R-R-O-W.