The Forsythia is in Full Bloom

as My Mom Pulls Away in her Sunshine Yellow Beetle

with Cancer Again.

    by Kelly Coveny

The phone call comes at nine am.

“Is it okay if I come by for a minute?” she asks.

I know.

I wait on our stone steps outside,

howling shrieks of hide and seek

one window away.

She pulls into our gravel driveway.

Pebbles crunch beneath her tires

the way they always do.

It is June.  There are no clouds.

Sunlight strikes me slant in the eyes.

She gets out.  I stand.

“It’s back,” I say.

“Yes,” she says.

I descend the one remaining flight of stairs.

We climb back up them together,

sit beside one another.

I wrap my arms around her,

fingers clinging to her buttery cotton cables.

She rests her head on my freckled shoulder.

We weep quietly.  Knowingly,

knowing nothing.

We talk little of facts.

They will consume us later.

Now, hide and seek has simmered

into race cars silently zooming up picture-story windows,

gravity, a limiting word in the hands of such adventurous gods.

Even the lawnmowers have stopped

choking down grass.

There is the white noise of breathing.

And then she goes,

backs down the long driveway,

her little yellow beetle car

blending into the long line of yellow forsythia,

sunlight swallowing her.

© 2010 Kelly Coveny

Published poet/novelist, commissioned screenwriter, produced lyricist/singer and advertising writer/creative director last employed at Saatchi & Saatchi, Kelly Coveny lives in Connecticut with her husband, two boys, and dogs.  Her work can be viewed at her company, PancakeFaktory.com.