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Left Behind By Her Dreams
In my mother's dream
it is Sunday, 1954.
She and her daughters
wear matching dresses.
Dad drives north after mass
to the brick family home,
Great-Nonna's stifling kitchen.
Women climb from
boxy Buicks and Fords,
carry pies, sleeping babies,
bowls overflowing
with crock-cured black olives.
Inside, the long tables are crowded
with half empty wine bottles.
On either side sit
joking uncles with twisted cigars,
thin, shiny-haired cousins.
Fat aunts swing
sweaty gold forearms,
hands waving to
erase troublesome husbands.
Mother imagines herself
sent for more bread,
wades through children and toys
to the service porch,
crosses the threshold.
She returns decades later
like Rip Van Winkle.
The rooms are silent and empty,
sisters vanished, parents dead.
Every member of the family
Has gone off and left her.
Night after night,
she makes the same trip,
always forgetting the outcome,
turning back in panic,
becomes an orphan.
Jennifer Lagier (Click for bio.)