Legacy

by Kendra Whitfield

Ancestors clutter my address
book. Death X’d out everyone I want to
call.
Don’t tell me this too shall pass as I set yet another
empty table. One place for every loss. There’s no room
for me. Fine, I’ll stand. Standing at
gravesides is my specialty. Look up “lonely” in the dictionary, you’ll find me
holding pictures of my dead.
I have no one left to cry for.
Just me, but my mother warned against self-pity: It
kills your will to live. She always
licked life’s bowl, never let heartache and disappointment impede her joy.
My brother, twisted from a childhood stroke, was the same: limping to each
next adventure, climbing mountains in between.
Our father couldn’t handle anything: rye, regret, responsibility.
Perhaps he made the right choice when he took the river exit.
Quitting, was in his DNA. I miss the dad I never had. Is that
rational?
Sometimes I bend beneath the burden of memory,
Tenderly, resolutely, almost reluctantly, I
unload their stories, allow myself the luxury of forgetting. A
vessel unfreighted with guilt, free to drift
wherever I wish. Trouble is, it’s
excruciating to be so untethered. Home is where
your people are. Surviving is not a
zero-sum game: you live, you lose.