for Simon
Sasha sent me the birdcage veil
she combed and pinned into her hair
on her wedding day, because she knew
she couldn’t be here: her son was born
just weeks before. Your mother opened
the package, leaving me a voicemail
I still have not erased. Emily,
something arrived for you today.
The dress your mother planned to wear
to the ceremony hung on her bedroom
door the Friday before she died.
Her heart stopped just days before
our wedding. Her younger brother held
her foot, singing the old songs they knew,
while I walked the halls of the hospital.
(He would die just five Septembers
later.) Now, it’s seven years,
and you have lost your elders, one
by one. Does it feel like vertigo,
except you’re staring up, instead
of down? In Piedmont Hospital,
a friend of your parents stopped my pacing,
asked me what size I wore: she left
a lace nightgown in our bridal suite.
We had to push the last guests out
into the champagne fuzz of sunrise.
I don’t remember if we kissed,
but the view from the room was a gold field,
the morning diaphanous with ghosts,
the grass defined in mist.