Because I lost my mother
in a crowded department store 
near Christmas, I understand why 
my daughter became so frightened today, 
and why I found her weeping, and  wandering 
the stacks, looking for me
when I was only in the restroom.

I remember searching all those faces,
even the shoes coming down the escalator.
I must have thought she’d abandoned me,
or died, leaving me all alone 
in the world, wondering, like my daughter, 
how we can just disappear so suddenly, 
when not a single one of all these books 
has the answer.
                        

It was me they passed
in Walmart this morning, first
my grandfather, stooped, gray, and ball-capped, 
his jaw working back and forth as if 
chewing a cud, or trying to speak.

Then a jingling carol overhead
summoned my sister, her name
that year dying of a brain tumor, and then 
there was my whole family, the dead,
a flock of them, wandering the aisles, 
ignoring me, squinting instead 
at the shelves as if searching 
for something more important.

Then even the living became ghosts too,
and I was surrounded and all alone,
until I looked down at my own hand
now clear as glass.