Dust By Christine Andersen

I go to your daughter’s house for a birthday party

when your grandson turns one.

You’d be so pleased he bears your name.

Powder blue balloons float

against the high ceilings,

colorful presents pile,

music wafts out the open windows.

Your ashes sit quietly on the bookshelf

in the urn your son selected.

Over two years now, you sit.

Collect dust on top of your dust.

Sometimes the cat walks behind

and you teeter, but never spill.

Your kids aren’t ready for release.

We were aging lovers, partners,

after long marriages crumbled.

Now I am an aging woman

staring at an urn

while toddlers scramble past to eat cake.

I want to take you off the shelf,

lift the lid,

whisper to your ashes.

But the house is crowded.

I blow a parting kiss and leave early.

It hasn’t rained in months.

As I head down the dirt driveway,

a cloud kicks up.

No surprise the world has gone to dust.

ABOUT:

Christine Andersen is a retired dyslexia specialist who hikes daily in the Connecticut woods with her five dogs at her heels, pen and pad in pocket. Her publications include the Comstock, Gyroscope, New Plains, Awakenings and Gramercy Reviews, Her Words, The Ravens Perch, Bluebird Word, and Coneflower Cafe, among many others. She won the 2023 American Writers Review Poetry Contest and the 2024 Lee Maes Memorial Award # 1 in the National Poetry Day Contest of Massachusetts.

EDITOR'S SONG PAIRING: Memories — NATIIVE, FINLAY