Anguish

By Katherine Santana

In the gravel backyard of what was once
a Victorian house, fashioned
after the Old World—now a three-family home
of migrants and first-generation offspring—
I play late into the night, forgetting daybreak,
alarm clocks, lonely walks on
broken sidewalks, the maples and clouds of gray.
I pick up stones;

I contemplate
their rough edges—an ashen rock with a
façade afflicted by time.

When I finally come inside, in the galley kitchen,
I see her—she sits listening to the receiver—
jotting down details of his passing.

Later, with my throat in a knot,
I lay awake hearing crickets chirp.
Remembering my him
in silent pillow-soaked anguish,
like a rock, now recognizable only as a measure of time.