Perhaps I should forgive
Telly for dying in my care, Just a
fish, someone said, Just
get another. Lucille said
our power becomes
greater when we lose the flesh; so,
when I poured Telly out
of his painted casket (a little wooden
egg) out over the rail of the
yellow bridge into the all
becoming, was it a miracle
that he had lived, was it a miracle?
Once, when I prayed for a sign,
God opened the closed
vault of the sky, the sun popped out
& shone directly in my face, & hail, yes,
hail started falling (in July). I was
afraid to believe in love. God,
don’t waste your miracles on me. &
the sun went back, like a face
retreating. Telly, you are bodi-
less, you are with my mother
& father. Say it wasn’t my
fault you suffered, with your little
working gills, say you forgive me.
—from The Undertaker’s Daughter