On the Way Home

from my father’s funeral,

a mime is performing on the corner,

laid out on the concrete like a corpse,

pulling herself up with an invisible rope

as if hope were a cliff to climb,

then levitates over a pretend chair

as if preparing to eat, drinking

an empty glass of air, her palms

bringing into being the nuanced

shape of bread to be broken.

I sit on the edge of a scrap of plywood,

a makeshift seat, perch as if on a ledge

heeding the gravity of all the unsaid.

Everything her eyes imply is about

the last meal I shared with my father.

“Do you hear me?” she hints

with her hands that have

become her voice, her frown

a phrase, a black drawn-on tear

a lost syllable, then,

as though life were something tangible,

sets up an imaginary ladder,

points to a nebulous cloud

she intends to reach, waving goodbye

as she begins to climb into the sky.

— Linda Annas Ferguson