A Minor Memory

It’s the little things  
that get to you somehow.  
Like my stepmother,  
years before she killed herself,  
standing in a field  
at a church event  
as a small group of ladies  
chattered nearby.  

It was summer, shady refuge  
contrasting with blinding  
basting  
yellow light on manicured grasses.  
My stepmother smiled at the group,  
unaware that she was being watched  
by me or anyone,  
and the smile seemed to express a longing,  
a yearning to share in the joke  
and be social and pleasant and whole  
within oneself. The ladies were laughing,
talking about “reinforcements”  
(one of them had brought snacks).  
 
I’ve probably given the scene  
too much emotional weight.  
It may have been  
just an absent-minded grin,  
expressing nothing but  
mild amusement at most,  
acknowledgement at least.  
 
But when somebody dies  
the little things swim up,  
grow legs and walk on land,  
engender ghosts that haunt  
in their strange way.