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BARBARA BLATNER Louise you repeat like a singer the story of your sisters death, how in stiff November sunlight, after church she washes the dishes, trembling at the counter, hands anointed in water, sways and calls your name, how with transparent care you slide a stool beneath her, as with one girlish sigh she drops her head on her chest with the weight of light stone. over and over you tell the story into legend or poem, mend detail, shift inflection with each telling, breathe the loss deeper into your lungs, and still you do not tell it enough. no words bring her back, Charlotte, whose chalky breath you followed through immaculate rooms: cellar where you canned soft-celled raspberries, attic lined with tinfoil flashing like skirts of angels, bedroom where girlhood dolls guard the pillow another sister died on twenty years before. death makes you a ghost in your own house. months after the funeral you moved through rooms of emphatic order in solitude till you could not bear its press. after summer burned away, you surrendered, fell, broke your hip, survived the hospital, went home with two nurses to an invalid's bed downstairs, you whose life was nursing others, each member of your family, two generations of ours. your nurse adjusts the flame to a sprout under the soup you will eat so little of and annoys you into sitting. because I am here, for a moment you try a joke, eyes rekindle, words fly from your mouth before they flutter down confused, white moths. oh Louise your hands your hands across your belly in the papery light. bitter and dim, this night spins close to dark- notched of Christmas Eve, hour of your savior's birth. in the window's glass, lights of a miniature tree reflect into the room that is now your life. how neatly it exhibits your tray of pills, plastic bottle smudged with two seasons of dying. now the veins in your hand rise, rivers of winter, you pull yourself to the rim of the bed, strain toward the ceiling, fall back, white-yellow hair flooding the pillow. "Mother," you call, "I want to go home," but there are no tears, your eyes are dry leaves. I would give you the gift of your sadness. now as your Christ, your child of moss, your bright boy, enters the calendar, he marks your dial with a shrouded sun. you face the terror of his renewal alone. Louise, child of unlavished tears, unweeded years, these are your holy hours
The Oxford English Dictionary defines REPAIR: Concourse or confluence of people at or in a place; resort, frequent or habitual going; making one's way; to arrive; to dwell; to heal, to cure, to recover; to renew; (AND!) to fix to original condition. In each sense, www.poetryrepairs.com
