Litany of a snail

   
I was fresh from the shower,      
in sweats, a t-shirt, no bra, sodden hair,      
getting ready for mass,      
when the deputy knocked on the door,      
and solemnly brought to his lips a name    
with which I’d not let pass my own      
in years.        
     
It’s a sin to speak ill of the dead.      
I remembered her      
bright-red hair...      
     
I remembered when I was nine,      
and we lived in an efficiency      
with her ‘former’ dealer,    
in a city far away from my home.    
I slept on the couch,      
my belongings in a small      
box in the closet.      
It was the first time I’d been more      
than minutes from the      
safe-haven of my grandparents.      
     
It was a time of childish,      
desperate hope;    
a time in which      
I sought miracles in      
bits of glitter on the      
school-art projects that      
weren’t allowed on his fridge,      
     
and sometimes found them.      
     
We took a walk by the river one day,      
she was sober, working,      
and had a quality moment      
for me.      
     
I was very quiet,      
very creepy as a child,      
the watchful stillness of      
chronic prey    
etched in my being;      
naught but a shadow passing      
through a streetlight on a dark sidewalk.    
     
Yet that day,      
I ran free in the sun,    
sucking in the tang of the      
brackish water,      
picking at barnacles on the broken pylons      
as the light struck her hair and      
dazzled me with her beauty.      
     
I found a snail      
crawling along a slime-covered rock      
with a long spiral shell      
that begged for shellac.      
She had a fast-food cup in her hands,      
     
and for once      
(for once)      
I asked for something,      
I begged,      
let me have it    
please      
please      
please      
     
From the soggy paper cup      
to a clean mayonnaise jar,      
refreshed with new river water      
every week;      
it was my best friend.      
     
Strange little girl with the too-old eyes,      
whispering secrets to a murky glass jar    
on the days when the watchful      
wall of fear crumbled      
against loneliness.    
     
I lost track of the snail maybe a half a year,      
and three different couches later,      
in the dead of night when we fled to the      
Salvation Army homeless shelter      
hoping to find a cot,      
a place on the floor,      
anywhere where the      
night didn’t explode      
in furniture shrapnel.      
     
Tonight, Christmas Eve      
was the first time I’d thought of      
the snail in decades,      
how much I actually cared for it,      
and how for a day      
she took time    
and granted me      
a boon I couldn’t actually afford,      
even at the age  —      
     
a moment of escape.      
     
Her name passed my lips tonight,      
as the deacon read the litany for the dead,      
and I dabbed my left eye with the sleeve of my      
sweater in a disallowed moment      
of grief for them both.      
     
For that strange little girl      
with the flame-haired woman,      
who so hopelessly wanted      
to walk by the river      
on more than one      
clean day.      
     
It’s a sin to speak ill of the dead.      
     
When I went to the locker,      
a child in an adult world,      
and touched her cold hand,      
it was knowing they were both to be buried,    
— the girl, and the woman —    
     
and I will speak of them no more.      
     
I prayed then for peace,      
and was answered      
with the echoes      
of footsteps      
by the river.