Please
(to my grandmother)
Put the number 40 on my back.
Let me run. Race away.
Cold tears on the paddock.
I’ve been weeping since June.
Stumbling around, no flashlight.
Seeing your face in every
unlit place, I’ve been
underneath cave after cave
trickles of water, formations
pushing up from the earth.
Tombstone. Graveyard.
Cemetery.
You were there
all of the times
I was in the back of the pack,
whipped to go faster.
You, my warm stable,
and my stable feedings.
How I bit into the spoon.
Feasts, apples, endless,
and your hand, patting my hand:
“You’re my good girl.”
I know you are at my end
of all of this,
whatever all of this
turns out to be:
when only a back porch light
remains flaming in my brain.
When more measures
would have been unkind,
we did not allow more tubes,
or let them break your legs.
Find a way to turn back.
The track is a circle.
Head toward the starting gate.
Come home.
*
Kristie Frederick Daugherty is a poet and a professor at the University of Evansville. She holds an MFA in Poetry from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She is also a PhD candidate in Literature/Criticism at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania. She is the editor of “Invisible Strings: 113 Poets Respond to the Songs of Taylor Swift” which was published in December 2024 from Random House. Find her online at www.kristiefrederickdaugherty.com
I love this poem, Kristie. It’s not only heartfelt but well-crafted, flexing a lot of depth, dimension, and poetic muscle. I love how you go back and forth between memories of your grandmother to the actual race that you’re in, which is a perfect metaphor for the race of life as well.
The pat on the back of your hand when you were a child: “You’re my good girl,” the emphasis on my, not “a good girl.”
I am so happy for your writing and academic success, and your recent TED series. How cool was that!
“when only a back porch light
remains flaming in my brain.”
The heart in this poem feels like mine. Great poem!
I mean like my heart…I wasn’t very clear about that! Sorry…
breathtaking.
Wonderful!