My step-mother is an incredibly strong, grounded, loving, and caring Christian woman. She thought she had finished raising children and had sent her two sons off to college, only to marry my father and inherit two very small girls that she lovingly raised like her own. She is brave, filled with wisdom, sensitive but strong, and has shaped me into a confident woman. This is an homage to her.
Poem for My Step-Mother
Allie Frazier
She’d been around enough death to know
to clean his fridge out
when that young man from church
killed himself.
While others signed cards
and baked casseroles,
she entered the now-silent house with quivering hands,
her heart beat bursting like a beacon in the hush,
as she trashed the food he never intended
to finish.
She goes
where others can’t.
She does
what I am too weak to do.
------
Months after our breakup,
my ex's toothbrush still
resiliently stood next to mine in the bathroom
we sometimes shared--
A sentinel of our old love.
To throw away meant I had given up,
and she knew I could never
let
him
go.
So
imagine my relief when,
on a sunny September visit home,
I entered our bathroom with
quivering hands and stinging eyes
only to discover
my toothbrush quietly standing alone;
the tiny murder I came to commit
having already been
done.
-2011
