You once said my name at Stonehenge,
and I heard you all the way back in Truckee. Scent

of my name was scent of lilacs, like the bouquet
you picked from our neighbors’ yard. But
 
beauty’s short lived and lilacs rust faster 
than most flowers. Bone has this

in common with flesh—both disappear. When
morticians zipped you

in plastic and sped away, I couldn’t 
remember if you died 

at night or during the day. My bed
isn’t made. I refuse to make it. Your impression’s

set in memory foam. Each night I turn 
over inside you, my hand

reaching for yours.
                        

You held tea to my lips when I 
was sick. I bathed you after your first 

stroke. How often we 
might have thought of others back

when our bodies were savory. In old age, you 
are whittled ivory; I am

and am not rounded off like a burl. Come
closer, you motioned that fateful night. I

have something to say. When I leaned
into your minty lips, such

wheezing roared out of your chest. While
heat from your body warmed me, I saw

fire on the beach where we’d camped. Bend
closer, you motioned, your face 

flushed. It was good while it lasted. Too
short. Too short.

I never knew my winsome Aunt Winona, her
hand a fine bone China, face 
a Modigliani; someone who might 
have recited Keats or Robert Burns, perhaps
pressed roses in a family Bible. What

she smelled of, not a hint, her voice, no trace. In the only
photo, her holding me in infancy, there’s 
a clue: her gaze stuck 
between ahead and behind—pretty 
woman with a bobbed cut. Her satin, A-line dress

slack over the cliff of her hips; her wedge shoes, Suiter
Hat with black veil, all speaking a certain 
respectability—small ruby necklace, a blood stain, 
in the hollow of her throat; a premonition 
to the blood clot she’d later die from. Given Winona’s 

necklace years after she passed, I wore it often, until
one day, taking an outdoor shower, I soaped 
the spot it rested in, groped 
for the familiar chain, searched 

the drain-rocks, and understood
that I held loss 
as though it were the only 
stable thing to hold when a woman 
decides enough.