Poetry | Marianne Kunkel

Midnight, for my mother, was the start of her personal day.

My siblings and I finally asleep, she’d pour

 

a bowl of Raisin Bran and spread the daily newspaper

like a tablecloth. She’d clip coupons,

 

jot the day’s temperature in her journal, and kneel to pray

with only our terrier listening, his curly head

 

warming her feet. The next day she’d pay,

nodding off during after-school game shows on TV.

 

Other kids see lipstick on their mother’s teeth;

I spied a little drool rivering down her chin.

 

If she ever regretted not getting more sleep, she didn’t say

and in my memory she’s like a queen from The Book

 

of Mormon who stayed awake by her sick husband’s bedside

several nights in a row. My mother perked up, grew alert,

 

as a night stretched on—bright, cold milk in her bowl,

precise cuts around coupons—just as this queen’s

 

senses heightened during long nights.

When the king’s servants claimed he was dead

 

she countered, then why have I never smelled

his body rotting? Her sharp focus won the praise

 

of a prophet, who revived the king

and called her the most faithful woman he ever met.

 

More out of my reach than my mother was her faith,

as easy as a pop song on repeat while I always hummed

 

a minor key. On my phone I keep a video

of her in a hospital gown, hair tangled,

 

a rare brain infection having stolen her speech

yet she could still sing along to a hymn.

 

My sister took a red-eye to be with my mother

when she died, while I was stuck in another time zone

 

and pregnant. She wheezed deep into the evening,

her favorite hours. My sister rang so I could say goodbye

 

but I didn’t hear. As my husband often tells me,

rousing me from sleep would take a miracle.