The Matriarch

She lay like a mannequin,
rouge on her cheeks, sporting
the latest fashion of the morgue,
but wearing those shoes:
the faded brown leather ones with the bubble
at the end where her big toe pressed,
with the orthodic heals stolen
from Frankenstein's closet.

She wasn't wearing those beasts
years ago when she took that train trip
to Yellowstone with her sister,
back when she was still a Baumgartner,
before she became a mother of five
and her body changed forever.

She wasn't wearing them when he came home drunk
and rationed out beatings with the garden hose.

She wasn't wearing them
back when I remembered her voice,
speaking to me as I nibbled on
ring shaped butter cookies.

But she wore them with her chin up,
transported from her wheeled contraption
to the commode, with only a grunt
squeaking through her lips.

She lay like a doll as the cousins
pillaged her body for keepsakes:
a pin that said her nickname in loops and swirls
and spectacles with her crust on the nose piece.

What I wanted was those beasts--
to climb into that casket
and send them to the crematory.
Instead, I was given back a gift
I had given her: a gold necklace
of the Madonna and Child,
and I saw the water pooling
in Dad's eyes like a freshly dug grave
with the sprinklers turned on.