Candle
After the call came, we drove straight to Wisconsin,
fourteen hours to his empty place, to clean out
his refrigerator, meet his friends, decide
which coffin would suit his body best.
It was mid-December. Close to Green Bay,
the landscape turned white, light reflected on snow.
His place was also snowed under: blank index cards,
letters to Madame Corinne, articles about Martians.
On his night table, his passport, and There are
No Coincidences. This is the closest I ever came
to loving him, standing in his empty room,
looking through his things, learning.
He was born in Georgia, not in Florida
as my mother always said, and he was five years
younger than her, though she claims her passport
is wrong, and in his passport picture he looks older,
worn out behind his glasses, emptied out, wrinkled skin
sagging, nothing like the blue-eyed football player
towering over my mother, slow dancing
in their honeymoon snapshots from New Orleans.
Yesterday, she said, again, "marrying your father
was the worst mistake." El peor error de mi vida.
"Light candles in front of their pictures,"
a medicine woman advises, so I light a candle
in front of them, dressed up and dancing
in a night club in New Orleans.
He holds her close. Even in high heels,
she doesn't reach his shoulder.
Behind them, on the dinner table,
champagne, unfinished wedding cake, candles.
"Candles are for the dead," para los muertos
my mother says. I wonder, how many
should I light, then? How many times has he
been dead? Cuantas debo comprar? How many
candles should I buy? One for each afternoon
he spent drinking in the neighborhood?
One for each time he left? How many for the years
he was away? And what of those neatly wrapped
packets he carried in his suitcase?
He wrote to share the news from a Brazilian jail,
as if he suddenly remembered he had
a daughter, and prison could bring us closer.
The stamps on his passport, Amsterdam, Buenos
Aires, Spain. And now, in West Virginia,
his ashes mailed here by the Wichman Funeral
Home, as I requested. For months,
I drove around with him in the trunk of my car.
Late spring, to please my husband, we went
to the river, poured my father, one scoop at a time,
on the towpath, on the bluebells, in the water.
Copyright Credit: Esperanza Snyder, "Candle" from Esperanza and Hope. Copyright © 2018 by Esperanza Snyder. Reprinted by permission of The Sheep Meadow Press.
Source: Esperanza and Hope (The Sheep Meadow Press, 2018)