Sharon Charde

THE THINGS I CARRY

two fragments of bone in a blue leatherette folder, the ticket stub from the red sox game I went to with my son, three packs of Kleenex, the letter that said I am nothing and will only become more nothing, the Roman morgue, the steps down to the Tiber.

I carry the room I shared with my sister and the Saint Anthony statue on our turquoise bureau, hundreds of rosaries and novenas, canasta games with Diane Amidon, Patty Turner’s driveway

I carry hair gels and sprays and volumizing shampoo, one husband, 2 wedding rings, an extra thong, Chinese herbs, and always, advil, I carry intensity though I don’t want to, and fear though it’s wearing a raincoat and you can’t see it

I carry pounds of bracelets and a chocolate bar, jeans that don’t fit, uncertainty and potential, I carry drama though my husband says love is not drama it doesn’t seem quite right without it

I don’t carry peace although I should

I carry the memory of my little boys at the table drawing in our first house, the sun shining on their hair as they bent over their pads, a fall day, pie in the oven, stew on the stove

I carry the glass half-full, four black labs, the sure knowledge of my death, metal in my lower back, questions with no answers, I carry apples, every luscious bite

LAST POEM

I keep trying to feel who I was before you
died. Listen to music I listened to then, Beatles,
The Band, Rolling Stones. Look through
old photo albums. You and your brother now
all over the upstairs hall walls, all those young
eyes clutching the cul de sac in my mind. I can’t
put the snake’s skin back around its flesh,
the snow back into the sky. Your brother
said to his girlfriend once, “I wish you’d known
my mother then, she was so different.” How, I
wonder, trying to grasp a flower from the garden
of weeds I’ve become. Nothing shiny, nothing
green and holy in me now. She’ll never know
me. Sometimes just breathing hurts. Things
don’t go away, they become you. I tell myself
I’m safe here, where there is no more careless
happiness. And you? Can you hear the sound
of yourself as I cannot? Do ghosts get stranded
in the pool of their own shadows? Can there be
music made of what I’ve lost? You never answer.

THE STORY

we’re sitting around a table eating lasagna, or walking down a
dirt road in Virginia, maybe in a dusty country store
crammed with jams and tee shirts and vitamins, or possibly
in the back seat of a taxi in New York or a hotel conference
room or next to each other on a plane—when the question
comes---how many children do you have and I tell the person
that I have two but one is dead and see the look I already
know I will see---a kind of blanching—a pulling away or
maybe back from what they hadn’t wanted to hear and my
god I hadn’t wanted to hear it either but now it’s like this
unlit candle I carry around never knowing who will have the
match and then they say how did your son die—of course you
don’t have to say if you don’t want to-- and of course I don’t
want to but I do want to and I tell them the story—a little
bit—he fell forty-five feet from a wall in Rome but then of course
they will think it was suicide---which of course is not true--if
I don’t tell the rest of the story—how thrilled he was to be a
student in Rome—his asthma—the dinner with John—the
paparazzi—the branch in his hand—and their eyes are so kind
now---they are so full of happiness that their own children
are alive—and then they want to know how long ago and I tell
them it’s been twenty three years already—he’s been dead
longer than he was alive—only twenty one I tell them—
although he really wasn’t quite twenty one but it’s easier to
say he was and sometimes like today I start to sob surprising
myself and causing the other person to back away or hug me
and try to comfort me and it doesn’t do any good really
because the hole is so big and there’s no way to fill it my god
I have tried and tried and will probably try forever and then
the conversation turns to what someone’s husband does---
what book they are reading—maybe what school their child
goes to—because after all we are all trying to tell our stories
aren’t we—and I smile and listen and all these candles are
burning inside me and even though it’s been so long—you
should be over it—I don’t know how to put them out--