Shirley Jones-Luke’s most recent poem to appear here was “Theatrics in my Head” (May 2018).

Orphan of Pride and Selfishness
By Shirley Jones-Luke

Ma did not want to be in a hospice. She voiced this several times before she passed. I was not there when she died 

When she died, I was at home, on the couch, sleeping. My body
laid at an angle, under the bright light of the living room lamp 

Under the bright light of the living room lamp, my cell rang, jolting me from my slumber, the hospital’s name flashed across the screen

The hospital’s name flashed across the screen, a woman’s voice, the doctor I had met earlier in the day, was on the phone.

She told me that ma had passed in her sleep. The nurses were cleaning her up.

The nurses were cleaning her up. Sound had left the living room. Air sucked out like a vacuum, I had stopped breathing, my eyes couldn’t blink

Ma was gone. My father left my life nearly 20 years earlier, he was dead to me when he chose golfing over walking me down the aisle

My parents are everywhere and nowhere, Ma in a casket, surrounded by dirt, my father, out in the world, but just as easily could be dead, I don’t know

I don’t know