Last week, Father did say that he and his brother were out of touch. I said, “Uncle died decades ago. When he was 27.” I did not remind him that his brother had shot himself. Nor did I tell him that I believed the skull was taking revenge—against Uncle having smuggled it back from the war, and against Father for accepting it.

I am not looking for the skull, but know I might stumble across it.

I know I would have believed that I’d killed her.

•••

Another Poem for Maude

What would her lips feel like—? A tulip petal? A porcelain bowl?

The last time I saw her she was waving goodbye as Ted and I drove off with the baby, already snoozing in the backseat. I saw her turn away to climb the three dozen steps back to the shambly house. Not her fault, the shambles. Not the fault of mice or the snow that settled into a crust on the flat roof.

Days later, Father took her to the theater. On the drive home, a car of teenagers broadsided them. Father cursed. Mother lay slumped on the passenger side. He didn’t realize she was dead.

A metal bowl? Doily? Birch bark? Page torn from an old book?

Ted and I decided to see her at the funeral home. To “view her” in the pine coffin. Before she was delivered to the crematorium. The undertaker commented on how “Orientals don’t show their age.” Sixty-eight, only a few years older than I am today. I looked. But I didn’t clip a wisp of hair as keepsake. I didn’t touch her clothes or her hand. It was enough to see what I would come to describe as the body that was Mother’s.

Ice? Mother once told me not to put lips or tongue on ice because the delicate skin would stick fast.

Was I afraid to kiss her on the lips, the lips that were my mother’s? Did sense even occur to me? Pumice? Bar of soap? Like both fastens and keeps at arm’s length.

(Had she wanted to go?)

•••

charms iii.

Trustfulness

Never take from a father’s shelf

Impressions of ancient reptile

Or you’ll fossilize your heart

And forever bleed out bile

•••

She Sells Seashells

Considering the Life of Mary Anning

When high tide withdraws

a shell burrows down with its foot

and should that muck harden,

the razor, say, may petrify

over millennia:

such demise may be a little girl’s good fortune.

Especially in 1811.

•

If only I believed in talismans

especially in regard to my dragonfly

possessed by stone for eons:

to make ends meet

Mary climbed a local cliff with tools

to pry out spirals—snake stones—

she’d sell to neighbors convinced

of their charming powers.

•

Mary was named

after her departed sister

who’d tossed sawdust on the kitchen hearth,

inspiring flames to her bib

and burning her to bits. Me,