Tonight's Poet Corner: Transatlantic Mourning

Transatlantic Mourning
by Belinda Roddie

Two hours before I was set to fly
from one side of the world to the other,
I received a call

from my father, of all people,
who told me that my mother had died.

She had been in her garden, pruning roses.
Pink roses, like the ones her own mother
always grew. The doctors said she went
quickly and without pain. I think the pain
skipped her altogether and went straight
to us in a brand new, raw, pulsing form.

I still boarded that plane, and I still felt
the Mediterranean air on my face, and I still
tasted salt on the breeze while feeling it in
my eyes. I drank ouzo with old friends and
family, took pictures of the pyramids, and sailed
a boat out toward Italy, wearing a flat straw hat.
I pretended my mother was there with me. She had

wanted to accompany me on an adventure one day.
I imagined her sitting in that vessel beside me, giggling
beneath a floral bandana, hiding her eyes, blue as
mine, behind oversized sunglasses, dipping her toes
into the wine dark brine that separated the gods
from the mortals, and her from me.