My Mother Feared Death

Alive or dead, mothers are troubling. 
Mine came back and said, ‘I’m lonely.’
I left the windows open and the lights on.
She was buried in blue.
It remained. Nothing else did.
Handed back to us in a plastic bag
her bones are forced into a niche.
‘I’m lonely,’ she says. 
I dream of her.
It’s the best I can do.