My mother’s never been the visitation type—
the type to appear at the foot of my bed,
middle of the night, to let me know she’s okay
in that more real than real kind of way.
Though I’m pretty sure she brought me flowers once,
a bouquet of orange coreopsis placed on the floor
beside my bed, the petals strangely bright
in nighttime darkness. And she keeps showing up
in my poems, even—or maybe especially—
after the one titled “Last Poem about My Mother”
in which my mother watches her heart—
dark, liquid motion on the screen beside her—
and calls it beautiful. Then there was the time—
at a hotel somewhere out east—
when I stepped onto the elevator and there,
across the inside of the door, was a photo of a woman
I can only describe as a younger version
of my mother—healthy and radiant—
in the driver’s seat of a red convertible,
smiling straight towards the camera.
My mother’s never really been the visitation type,
yet here she was watching me, as I ascended
to my room on the twenty-third floor.
Life’s too short not to enjoy your stay, was the caption.
She looked happy, with no hint of sorrow.
It was nothing like seeing a photo of someone alive,
healthy, and thinking—which, I confess,
I often do—that this is the one, the photo
that will be used, sometime in the future,
at their funeral, enlarged, framed, and placed
at the front of the sanctuary. The photo
that says this person loved life, lived in joy.
But a photo, full of joy, is—at a funeral—
full, too, of sorrow. Joy and sorrow, impossible
to separate. Like the two possibilities
of an optical illusion, where you’re supposed to decide
if a cat is ascending or descending a staircase
or if what appears to be a vase is instead
two people looking towards each other.
The photo in the elevator was nothing
like this. The photo in the elevator was only
life and joy and now. Which I’ll take.
Whatever my mother gives me, I’ll take.
A bouquet of flowers, a photo in an elevator.
Or poems. So many poems.
by Lisa Dordal
Lisa Dordal teaches poetry at Vanderbilt University and is the author of Mosaic of the Dark (2018), Water Lessons (2022), and Next Time You Come Home (2023). Her poetry has appeared in The Sun, Narrative, Image, Christian Century, Best New Poets, and Essential Queer Voices of U.S. Poetry.
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