I close my eyes

                                      and I see him 
wearing a pale-green hospital gown, ready 
to receive my kidney. A forever hug and
our See ya after the surgery, I love you. I
close my eyes and see him wearing a black
rented tuxedo, fighting tears to usher me into
my new life as a wife. I close my eyes and 
he is sitting in the front row of my dance 
recital beaming for his little hippity-hoppity 
tapdancing frog. I close my eyes, and he is 
telling me, in that heartbreaking tone, how 
I’ve disappointed him. I close my eyes, and he is
wearing a smile of approval and boasting how 
proud I make him. I close my eyes, and he is
wearing that crocheted, beer-can hat I made
for him in Girl Scouts, trying to put the worm 
on the hook at the father-daughter fish rally. I
close my eyes and he’s holding his pink swaddled
girl for the very first time and handing out cheap
cigars, announcing to a roomful of strangers he has
a new “tax deduction,” with his trademark dry wit. 
I close my eyes and he’s naming me after the first 
girl he ever kissed. I close my eyes. I close my eyes. 
I close my eyes. I keep trying to forget the memory
that comes rushing when my eyes open—the one
where he’s wearing a dark suit, in a casket, and I’m 
tucking a goodbye poem into his pocket.

*
 
Two Questions

           Fully aware that there is no adequate answer. 
            We offer a tattered, inadequate little bouquet of language…
                                    —George Bilgere, Poetry Town 


When they learn he lived for two years 
after the transplant, they always ask me 
the same two questions: Was it worth it? 
Do you have any regrets? 
                                            And every time, 
I am gobsmacked. Such audacity slaps me 
like February wind whipping the Mississippi 
under the old Eads Bridge. And then, I see
the innocent curiosity in their eyes. How
could they know?— 
			           About that day we spent 
at Butterfly House, Dad’s first summer sporting 
my kidney like a new pair of Bermuda shorts. How 
when he tried on the silly caterpillar cap, I giggled 
like a four-year-old little girl. Or the home-run taste 
of Budweiser at our last Cardinal game when Holliday 
rounded third base. 
                               How when confessing his mistakes, 
he found forgiveness in my eyes, and could finally drop 
the stone he carried in his heart pocket. 
                                                                   Or how success 
of the operation isn’t measured by mere years. Rather, 
by grains of sand, each one adding to the castle a girl built 
with her dad, how the low tide of his passing could never 
wash it away. 
                       An old man walks into the room. With him—
the scent of my father’s aftershave. 

*

 
Tomato

She kneels before her altar, this
modest garden box of leftover
lumber, filled with entangled 
varietals of heirloom fruit. Each orb 
lush with blush-a-bursting, begging 
to be plucked. A plant’s desire to share 
the juicy tangy-sweet, that it alone
could offer in this sacred moment
under a blistering sun. When she carries
one to her kitchen, she brings generations
worth of struggle and adaptation, not
unlike its Cherokee namesake—its purple
bruise of heartache and a fullness ripe 
with the tenacity of survival. A single
slice brought to her tongue with a trail
of salt left upon a cutting board. Her tears
fall for this harvest. Her love no longer
beside her, to relish this bounty with her. 

*

Shawn Aveningo-Sanders’ poems have appeared worldwide in literary journals including ONE ART, Calyx, Eunoia Review, Naugatuck River Review, Poemeleon, Sheila-na-gig, About Place Journal, and Snapdragon, to name a few. She is the author of What She Was Wearing, and her manuscript Pockets was a finalist in the Concrete Wolf Chapbook Contest. She’s co-founder of The Poetry Box press and managing editor of The Poeming Pigeon. Shawn is a proud mother of three and Nana to one darling baby girl. She shares the creative life with her husband in Oregon.