Listening to the Carpenters “Sing”

 

Listening to the Carpenters “Sing”

I don’t remember you— thick framed glasses, laugh lines and hands that never saw wrinkles.

I don’t remember you when I smell the red pillow you made full of pine that we bring out in December, year after absent year. I don’t remember you when I see my dad’s eyes get blurry, his sister across the room at Christmas.

I don’t remember you when my dad pauses to wipe his eyes reading a poem on Mother’s Day or the end of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. I don’t remember you when I walk by It’s a Small World in Magic Kingdom or pass a breast cancer treatment center.

I don’t remember you when I’m listening to The Carpenters “Sing” and get sad. I don’t remember you when I close my eyes and try.

I don’t remember you when I think of your mother’s hands, hands that I knew, that knew me better and longer than yours ever did. Your hands that could have held me, held me enough times that we lost count.

I don’t remember you, but I imagine that you were safe and good and you delighted. That you took joy by the face and kissed it there on the lips in front of the kitchen window. 

I still don’t remember you on Easter, the day you left, even when I smell the daffodils and hear the birds and see how the death is turned to life again.

Still, I remember you when I think of Jesus, holding you— “Talitha cumi”— with human, broken hands.

— olivia gwyn