On Easter

I think about my mother eating alone,

cooking in the kitchen

where her bedroom's also fashioned,

sitting at that wrought iron table

she moved from our childhood home;

or I think about my nana in that nursing home,

by the bridge in Connecticut,

and I bet she misses the aroma of

her famous stuffed artichoke

swirling thick through the air.

Last time I saw them both I didn't tell them

I wouldn't be back for a while ⁠—

how could I?

Watching my mother run to the window

and wave goodbye, as I slung a plastic bag full of

leftovers and canned soda over my shoulder,

trying to catch the next train;

or that look on my nana's face

when I surprised her last winter,

and she held my hand in both her hands ⁠—

how we cried when I said I had to go.

I went out to the green garden that Sunday

and thought about being alone,

seeing both women all around me ⁠—

in the blue bells growing from the earth

and the rabbits running through the pine,

and felt myself free,

while still being someplace else.