BLOG: 6's & 7'S
![]() 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 Today, at last, I throw out that last pair, faded like old tires, plus an outdated silk shirt that reminds me of the dress they buried my maker in.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
1 Comment
12/6/2016 04:00:59 am
Thanks again for the kind words, and for helping me bury that body in the back of--I mean, hi. *cough*
Reply
Leave a Reply. |
![]() Now Available at:
Amazon B&N.com Kobo books Google Play Follow me on Twitter @KellySGamble
Like me on Facebook at K Stone Gamble
Visit my writing blog
|