for Thomasina Winslow (1965-2023)
“Can’t tell my future, and I can’t tell my past
Lord, it seems like every minute, sure gonna be my last” –Willie Brown
You sing these lines, convincing
me they were the sign I missed
days after you died. I listen again
your voice sudden, tense, insisting
that every effect follows from a cause
that people don’t just drop
dead leaving others
to find them.
Shock and disbelief—
that’s what others feel. Not me
since the universe swells with meaning.
Except at night,
when he sits on the couch
crying
and words I never speak
collect underneath the cushions
like loose change
knowing you and he made music together
felt the mysteries of connection
all those nights on stage.
I rest my palm on his back.
Still he can’t talk about you.
Still he can’t grieve.
I clutch his shoulder
wanting to impart some shiny
truth to dim his pain.
Days later, a change
has come over him.
I don’t know when or how.
He speaks of you softly,
tenderly, giving you a new name:
He calls you T.
Moriah Hampton
Moriah Hampton holds a PhD in Modernist Literature from SUNY-Buffalo. Her fiction, poetry, and photography have appeared in The Coachella Review, Typehouse Literary Journal, Ponder Review, Hamilton Stone Review and elsewhere. She currently teaches in the Writing and Critical Inquiry Program at SUNY-Albany.
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