Poetry by Francois Peloquin
Art by Rissa Chua
My mother goes first,
turning herself into the clock
that stopped right twice each year,
a metronome of albums, candles, and prose;
my father next,
silent, knowing the boy
was not his, becoming the keys of the piano
that tried each spare room in heaven;
my sisters later,
reshaping last words into
cutting rights, last pictures
into stained glass;
finally me and my brothers,
borrowing, in turns, his nineteenth year,
trying on his wrists and clavicles for size
before throwing them off like hand-me-downs.
What I do know: That the pages
have never stopped filling with your sound.
That we who remain are cursed
to form and reform ourselves
to your echo
of pavement on bone.