Landmarks by Michael Meyerhofer

 I asked for stories about family: the fun, the inspirational, the heartwarming moments that make us part of a family. Author and Poet Michael Meyerhofer shared a poem that will tug at your heart:









Landmarks

I bought a bag of all black socks

with my twenty-first birthday money,

thinking this would save me

from having to match them, sure,

but also the embarrassment

of wearing white ones to a funeral

like I did after my mother died--

same day my father

almost cut my left ear off

when I asked him to help me

remove the rusty latch of an earring

for years I thought was in style.

He couldn’t see straight,

didn’t even register my curse

when the scissors caught my lobe

until my brother stopped him.

Since I was already born

without a right ear,

for which I never blamed her

but now and again the ultrasound,

I’m grateful. My brother

tells me how he wore black jeans

to his rich girlfriend’s

sister’s wedding, how they laughed

so hard he had to spend

the next five years climbing

the economic ladder to Dewey Ballantine,

dinners under a ten-foot chandelier.

Today, at last, I throw out

that last pair, faded like old tires,

plus an outdated silk shirt

that reminds me of the dress

they buried my maker in. Sunflowers

permanently wrinkled by disco.

She looks lovely, said her old roommate,

blond with black eyebrows,

as she pulled me deep

into a Midwestern bosom

perfumed by the Dollar General,

so deep I wanted to cry.

And would have, had I been

brave enough to wear the grief

my mother earned—she who daily

tamed my cowlicks with a wet comb,

even after the milk dried

and I, insufferably ignorant,

stopped believing she was God.


Visit Michael's poetry website at www.troublewithhammers.com. 

Visit his fantasy website (actually, not Michael's fantasies, but for his bestselling fantasy fiction) at www.wytchfire.com

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