Sunday poetry

Safe

After we buried my mother, we drank beer
and told stories in the room where she'd died.
The hospital bed was gone and the portable
commode I'd helped her settle on, the love
seat tucked flush with the window again, long
sofa shoved against the wall like always, the same
sofa where she'd fall asleep watching baseball
while she waited for me to come home from
some high-school date, and once, when I wasn't
home by midnight, she threw a raincoat
over her flannel pajamas and drove around
until she found me mussed and unbuttoned behind
the Big Boy, sharing a bagged can of Colt 45
with the second-string quarterback. All the way
home and for an entire week, I was punished
by silence, a vast black void of disgust. The last time
I saw her, I wanted her to speak to me, to lock
the front door and turn off the last
light, to follow me upstairs, having made
the house safe for the night. But she didn't
know who I was.

~ Sarah Freligh