ManicDDaily

Purgatory

We sat in the back seat arguing
about mortal sin, seams
of steaming upholstery creasing
backs of knees, nice
dresses, car an oven
waiting for Celeste’s
mom stopped to get something first
at the BX.

Even Celeste’s freckles haughty–being Catholic,
she felt she knew so much more
about such things–the classification
of sin–laughing in a funeral parlor one, but way worse
dying without
first communion.

But she was only two
and a half.

She shrugged shoulders boney
as chicken wings, confident
of her stuff–her whole family
somehow scrawny, seven kids and dad a pilot,
Vietnam.

The actual place smelled so thick–of dark
and wax, flowers that came
from a shop (refrigeration and
pollen stilled
by spray)– that I feared that I
might sneeze, Celeste
laugh, and then me too, both damned

forever– until I saw her–Dolly–Dorothy–
as molded as her nickname petaled
in satin white, lips pinked
into a rose bud like the nips
of the smallest bouquet by her head–a card that looked
like embroidery on
a bib–“Grampy”–in looping letters.

Celeste’s mom’s plank-back shook–a loose board
stepped on hard, as Mrs. Kerner, Dolly’s mother, appeared, her face
shining as if washed with water from a frozen
bucket, Celeste and I carefully not looking
at each other–it wasn’t that
we would laugh, but the idea
that our throated chests
could move at all, our eyes, our unbound
suntanned legs, felt
like a sin in that room, surely
mortal.

*******************************

The above is a draft poem for dVerse Poets Pub’s Poetics prompt by the incomparable Brian Miller to use more detail in making a scene.  Still away from home but have my computer at last (have been relying on mobile devices, which are fantastic in many ways, but not like a computer.)  

Sad, as we all are.  I’ve tried to stay away from TV coverage; unbearable.