My wet eyes stared into their lights
During our family FaceTime call
at Chanukah last year,
we lit the fifth day candles
on the menorah,
and my seven-year-old granddaughter,
the image of her late mother,
asked us,
Who misses Mama the most?
I’ve spent the whole year wondering
how to answer.
At a Shabbat dinner on Friday night
when the woman opposite me said,
Where are your children?
I could tell her my son lives in Canada.
But I don’t know where my daughter
is — she didn’t leave a forwarding address
when she left.
*
Roseanne Freed grew up in apartheid South Africa and now lives in Los Angeles, where she takes inner-city school children hiking in the Santa Monica mountains. A Best of the Net and a Pushcart nominee, her poems have appeared in ONE ART, MacQueens Quinterly, Naugatuck River Review, and Blue Heron Review among others.
Lights and tears mark the knell of passing time
That’s true.
Methinks you all miss her the most 💔
I like that Edith. You’re right that we all miss her the most.
What if we knew that this missing is really like missing birdcall even as it vibrates in our very being?
Oh Priya what a beautiful metaphor to describe this particular kind of missing. Thank you.
A wonderfully poignant and thought provoking poem about an indescribable loss.