Don’t speak for me, girl,
you only know what you can see
and it’s not much, that picture took
when scant was left, just bony arms
around the baby, eyes too big for my head;
I never would have worn that shade of red
they painted on my dress after the fact
of me was buried in the ground.
Your daddy’s little suit was white, not blue;
we didn’t know what he’d come out as
when I bought the cloth.
I know that picture’s
all you’ve got, and half my name,
Pauline, glommed to your other granny’s,
and gave to you as if it might be something
of me they could hold. I’m gone
and all my stories with me—you’ll not know
if I was one to drink bad as the man
whose name your daddy carried
like a curse or promise never to be him.
You had enough
without me, and your daddy made it up
somehow for all he lacked
for lack of me. Just let me go;
those poems you write (did your many
books not teach you how to rhyme?);
they are all yours, and none of mine.

-Pauletta Hansel