Slow Motion Grief

By Charlotte Matthews

My mother’s been gone longer
than my daughter’s been alive,
and still she visits me in office waiting rooms.

At MedExpress she sent a text saying
she was sorry she’d missed my call,
but she’d been at the movies.

It was a misdial, of course,
written by someone else’s mom,
but I allowed myself to briefly believe

she’d been in the shroud of a matinee,
tucked out of the hot June sun.
In that same office she appeared

in a photograph of a screech owl — wise bird,
perfect fit. I’ll never know why she didn’t tell
me she was sick. But when she checked

herself into the hospital to die, she folded her pants
and shirt so neatly before tucking them
into the plastic drawstring bag, I couldn’t bear

to take them out for a very long time, meaning
for years. The bag sat on my closet shelf
where it stunned me every single day.

I’ll never know what she had on her mind
before the morphine drifted her away.
A crater is a bowl–shaped cavity in the ground

or on the moon, caused by impact of a celestial
body. Isn’t that what grief really is?
A cavity, an emptiness that can never be filled.