Déjà vu
       

So I will have written it before, I write

my mother died. It isn't true. She lives

in Pittsburgh, has a dresser, bed and chair

in her room, a wardrobe and TV.

Her name is Sharpied in all her collars

and on the inner soles of her shoes,

one of which was discovered

beneath her neighbor Mildred's pillow,

where she may have laid it down to sleep.

Blue leather shoe she wore to work

with corduroy slacks and cotton shirts,

islanded shoe, exhausted shoe

laid to rest then made to do its job

upon a foot again. Dear clairvoyant shoe,

dear keeper of an alphabet of bones, I try

to walk in you as I write my mother dies.

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Copyright © 2020 Deirdre O'Connor All rights reserved
from The Cupped Field
Able Muse Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission