Let's go visit Millie

Let's go visit Millie

my husband says on our way back from Home Depot and for a minute
I picture us pulling up beside his mother's home on Front Street
in the shadow of luxury yachts. Then I remember he means

her grave and the oddness of it settles into me. I never
went to the funeral, having ministered to her in those last
days before she slipped away, her blood refusing to move.

I said what I said. Too late for her to hear anything now,
but my husband went with a small group of her last friends,
laughing at her oddly splattered reputation. No service.

No solemn rituals. Funny how he went fifteen months
without speaking to her, yet he wants to see if the rosebush
his ex-wife planted still grows above her head.

You're fat. Lose some weight, she scolded.
Paint your house. It's an eyesore.
You should get a job.

A haiku of accusations, insinuations, betrayals.
I listen to the impartial grumble of the truck, one brake
catching slightly, groaning. We turn right beyond

the Youngstown Inn into the cemetery, drive
to the end, near the last headstone, and park.
His footsteps bend the August blades

and I follow, not knowing exactly where we are going.
He kneels down, fingers the cut stem, the remains
of the plant. They've been mowing over it,

he says and wonders why. There's no marker
I answer. Only a vague rectangle still exists
in the grass. I point out other graves

without stones, with wooden crosses,
with whirligigs of ducks, endless American flags.
Next time he comes, he says he will bring

a large rock, a stone, dark and heavy,
something he has lying around, something
easy to throw in the bed of the dying truck.