Naomi Millan

SONG FOR PEG

Naomi Millán

States away the sky
fills with glass shards.
It's so cold the snow comes
brittle, sticking on everything
like fingerprint powder.
Everything searches for traces.
They are burying you Peg,
like a love note into a pocket,
folding you away for safekeeping.
South Carolina. Red earth,
white stones. Muscle and bone.
Not a crumb of it yours.
Peg, you are gone and I lie in bed
with your grandson, as though
you were not. He grieves
by barely showing pain
at the drum of details, blood
in your lungs, a Valium “So long.”
He does not wonder at you
so suddenly past tense.
Both of you are of different ken,
flint hard in your anger and grief.
I offer tears and worry, bitter bread
and brackish drink for your journey,
but I know you have little use
for me, recent knick knack,
simple consequence of a boy's passing
out of his grandmother's hands.
When we met, you and I, your body
had already caught you,
but from a distance, I could see the girl
staring back, all brass and glare,
suffering no stranger's pity or place
at her table. Peg, we will meet yet
when in anger or love my children
level their gaze at me, a ready blade,
needing neither my words nor
my fading presence in a lit doorway.

As an undergraduate, Naomi Millán majored in French and journalism, and lived for a year within sight of Mont St. Victoire in Aix-en-Provence, France. She holds a M.F.A. in poetry from the University of Houston. Her poetry has been published in The Journal and in The Texas Review.