A Mutual Aching to Leave

Each section is based on the Oxford English Dictionary’s word of the day from March, 2022.

I. cardiffian, n.

I start my day
watching river water
flow into the bay.

II. barley sugar, n.

A candy shop by the footbridge
switches its sign
from closed to open.
The display case filled with fudge,
hard candies my mom would like.
I consider buying them, before remembering
she’s gone.

III. beastie, n.

A dog walks by that looks like hers.
No matter how far I travel,
I cannot escape her memory.

IV. interrrobang, n.

I keep landing on
inconsequential memories,
not ones with thematic resonance
or impactful consequences.
Why do I keep thinking
about the time her tea kettle vibrated
on the element, her worried exclamation
asking me what I did, her laugh
afterward scolding herself
for jumping to conclusions?

V. toyetic, adj.

I used to run across the house
barefoot on Saturday mornings
to beat her to the tv
so I could watch cartoons.

She’d bring me breakfast,
which I’d absent-mindedly ignore
while children would command
small monsters to attack each other.

VI. kente, n.

I head back to my hotel;
wrap her urn in a cloth
made by her best friend,
gifted at her memorial back home;
place it in my backpack
to take her on a Dr. Who walking tour —
something she asked for
in the hospital.

VII. anythingarian, n.

As I walk
from landmark to landmark,
I debate
what to do with her ashes.
She told me
many different ideas, locations,
never settling.

VIII. chipmunk, n. and adj.

During a break for lunch,
a chipmunk approaches
my table outside the cafe,
looks me dead in the eye.
I see her. In those eyes. It’s like
she’s sending me a message.

IX. bandulu, n. and adj.

A voice emits from the eyes.
“Rialto Beach. Scatter me
on the rocky shore.”

I open the permit application when I get
back to my hotel, but the letters
blur, the boxes checker.

I book a flight back home.
I’ll just go the coast and
do the thing.

X. zombocalypse, n.

People walk around the airport
like packages on a conveyor belt.
I sit alone by my gate
in an uncomfortable pleather chair
when someone walks toward me,
sits in the seat right next to me.

It is my mother.

XI. cuddy wifter, n.

A notepad appears on her lap,
a pen in her left hand.
She draws quick lines
to make feathers
of a great blue heron
standing in a still pond.

“I want so much to be at peace.”
Her voice a tired drawl.

XII. amaxophobia, n.

The ceiling dings. An announcement
about my flight boarding soon.

“I can’t believe you flew my ashes across the planet. You know I hate flying.”

“You said you wanted to see the places in Dr. Who. And it was a walking tour.”

“You can’t believe everything a dying woman tells you.”

XIII. bassa-bassa, n.

The ceiling dings.
My boarding group is called.

She stands before I do, stomps
her feet, yells at me for putting her
through this.

People walk through her
as she screams.

XIV. belove, n.

She continues to guilt me
as I walk through the skybridge,
down the aisle to my seat
near the back of the plane.

I’m sure she will go on
for the whole ten hours
until we land in Seattle.

I will do whatever is needed
to give her peace. It’s what
a son should do.

XV. overshare, v.

My guilt is immense.
Guilt about making her travel;
guilt if I hadn't traveled in the first place.
There is no winning.
My guilt is immense.

XVI. utopiate, n.

My ZzzQuil kicks in somewhere
over the Atlantic; I fall
asleep. My feet bare,
toes dug into the edge of sand
pulled under by the surf.
Soft wind, quiet roar,
the sun behind
a pale canvas of clouds.

XVII. flaithulach, adj.

The last time
my mom saw the coast —
winter — a last escape
before chemo kept her
homebound.
She stood on driftwood logs,
arms wide, a deep breath of salty air.
Ocean spray or tears, I’m unsure.

XVIII. powfagged, adj.

An overhead announcement
of our imminent arrival in Seattle
wakes me. My eyes struggle open.
My mom's voice crescendos
as blurs transition into shapes.
She scolds me for falling asleep
while she was talking.

XIX. credentialism, n.

Baggage claim, she draws me in
a graduation robe, holding a diploma cover.
“I wish I could have seen it.”

“Me too.”

“You shouldn’t have taken that semester off.”

“I had to. You are more important than a piece of paper.”

“I was dying. That ‘piece of paper’ would have been your key to a successful future.”

XX. bestiary, n.

I wait for my Uber
in the parking garage.
Midmorning, the smell
of concrete and gasoline.
Five Subarus drive by
ten people and one ghost
waiting for their getaways.

A blue Prius pulls up.
The driver leans their purple hair
out of the window to announce my name.
They offer to help with my suitcase,
but I decline, placing it in the backseat,
until my mom mutters
under her breath. I put it in the trunk.

XXI. wych elm, n.

The driver makes small talk
while my mom complains
about how everything’s changed.

They stop the car just past the driveway
under the tree in our front yard
whose branches leave
a fluctuating pattern on the hood.

I transfer luggage from their car to mine
while my mom taps her foot,
stares at the mailboxes down the road.

XXII. free solo, n.

I take 512 to I-5 to 101 for a beat,
route 8 to 12, then back to 101,
but clockwise,
along the coast —
the sun sinks into the pacific.

She watches it all in silence.

XXIII. siu mei, n.

The full moon exposes
a near-empty parking lot.
The rocky shore tinted blue, except
for an orange spot at
the driftwood’s edge.
A family sits on logs around it,
laughing, singing.

XXIV. light fantastic, n.

My mom walks
over the logs to the wet sand
— no footprints —
and dances to the singing family.

XXV. imagineer, n.

I wake up to an overcast sky —
a matte canvas
behind my fogged windshield.
My mom's urn secure
in my backpack beneath
the passenger seat.

It’s time for her final walk
along the coast.

XXVI. archaeobotanist, n.

“Before you were born, your father drove us out here for a weekend in the summer. Rialto was pretty unknown back then — hardly any other people were walking the shore. You could really hear the waves crash and the rocks shuffle beneath your feet.

“We sat on a log right around here for a break halfway to Hole in the Wall, and I just stared at the horizon. The crashing waves surrounded me. Then your father, that sweet man, put this flower in my lap — looked like a paintbrush imbued with fire — so orange, so warm.

“I kept that flower in a notebook for years. I pressed it between the pages I wrote about the trip.

“I never wanted to forget.”

XXVII. dayside, n. and adj.

After a rest, Hole in the Wall in sight,
I take her urn out of my backpack.
It feels like
she would want to see it approach,
feel the sun
one last time.

XXVIII. saketini, n.

She squats over a tide pool
to poke a crab hiding
under an anemone.
It flinches, untouched.
She laughs. “Yes,” a sigh,
“That’s what I needed.”

XXIX. chip, v.

The rock juts out into the water.
Hole in the Wall, an arch at its end.
Tide’s coming in; I have to move fast.
I step around tide pool edges
barefoot, quickly, before they’re buried.

XXX. monophobia, n.

Under the arch, anemones sway
in tide pools sloshed by the incoming tide.
I hesitate. Her urn, opened, in my hands.
I know I need to. I know she needs it.
But what will happen? What will happen
when she is finally gone?

XXXI. jeune premier, n.

I scatter her ashes along the tide pools
on the north side of Hole in the Wall.
I look south to her standing on the other side.

She walks toward me through the arch,
dissolves in beads of light, which expand
to the Hole’s rim, fade to an overcast sky.