Alinda Wasner
Alinda Wasner’s
work has appeared in 30 small press publications including Fresh Water: Women
Writing About the Great Lakes, Passages North, The Wayne Review, and The
Jimmy Santiago Baca’s comments:
“Doorway is elegiac in
tone but confident, mature in voice; I love this poem, its audacity thrills me,
its structure is compact...nicely done.”
Alinda Wasner
Doorway
So what is loss anyway
but the swagger of boys
in white suits
who brag about how heavy
the casket of their friend was
that stupid boy
who ran onto the highway
without looking both ways
as if he didn’t know
that kids could die
and so what if I don’t like
the way they deface
the sky of my coloring book
with great slashes
of red like blood
saying clouds are nothing
but reflections anyway
so I might as well get over it
and I might as well
get used to the fact
that it is my mother
who slammed our back door
against the dead boy’s mom
who keeps coming back
don’t I know the other moms still let her in
their front doors even now
a year later
because they know
that mothers like mine
who have to adopt their kids
will never know
what it means
to lose something
they could never
forgive themselves for losing?
and so what if the grey
of my mother’s eyes
clouds those things
we both should just always have known
in the first place?