My mother sketched in quick lines overlapping.
Gradually, the subject emerged, like a Polaroid 
exposed to light. Most often she drew people, 
sometimes children, though they moved so fast – 
like fireflies, they had to be caught. Here’s
my daughter when her hair was fair in curls 
around her face, on a dinner napkin with the word 
“caught” and the date. Children not her own, 
even grandchildren, were a mystery to Mother, 
but she could draw them, stilled like insects
on flypaper, like butterflies pinned to a board 
where they would be forever quiet and obey.

My mother kept our childhoods enshrined 
in framed collages on her walls. She was there, 
too, skinny dark-haired girl with a pair 
of baby-faced brothers. But most of the photos 
showed us as children, teenagers, young adults, 
parents with toddlers. 
 
It’s been so long since we were those versions 
of ourselves. We remember those times, not 
as we would remember them, but as the tyranny 
of each photograph insists. And according 
to that tyranny we are at our best: smiling, 
healthy, surrounded by and full of love. 
 
What the photographs don’t show is how
we’ve struggled for money, marriage and health, 
how my brother and I stand on opposite banks 
of our parents’ philosophy, how our sister’s reality 
is gradually losing facts and details.
 
When Mother died, we divided the collages
among ourselves and our children. Now 
our younger faces gaze from where they lean 
against the walls, and from my own dresser --  
my son’s and daughter’s childhood selves 
preserved in frames, little ants in amber.

She’s got 93 years on that body. It still works, 
mostly. It needs a brace on one leg (Consult 
a neurologist next time you slip a disc!)
but it gets around with the help of a purple walker 
with zebra stripes. The brain still works most 
of the time, especially with the right 
old-memory-trigger.
 
She’s going to donate this body to science: 
the 93 year-old heart that hasn’t always 
done the right thing; the overactive digestive tract; 
the eyes that have seen so much with their 
20-40 vision; the vocal chords that have told jokes, 
sung arias in five languages and spoken with authority 
even upon ignorance; the bony hands that painted 
all the paintings that hang on her walls. 
She’s pretty sure the Grim Reaper is on his way. 
She's been waiting for him for years now. 
“What use am I here? Why am I still alive?”
 
She’s in bed right now in a purple nightgown, 
waiting. I tell her, “If you really want him to come, 
play hard to get! If you keep throwing yourself at him,
he’ll never come.” And every time he does come by 
he takes a look and says, “Nah, not this time.” 
Maybe he’s saving her — not for last, for of course 
there is never a last. Maybe he’s saving her 
for that one day when he’ll be sure she’s the right one; 
he’ll drop his scythe and gather her into his arms: 
white limbs, silver hair, purple nightgown 
rippling in the wind.