Poem: Grandma’s Buddhas

Grandpa gave me Grandma’s three Buddhas

Because she is no longer here to want this

Trinity of not trivial treasures she bought when she

Took her family to Nepal, so restless was her

Heart that my father had traveled around the world

By the time he was still young enough to understand it.

One of wood, one of brass, one of stone—

Small statues to remind me of her

Reaching, that longing and I wonder if she

Ever touched it, if she ever held it.

“I’m not very happy,” she could have said

Had she ever faced herself with brutal honesty,

“But damn, I’m trying to be.”

Because dammit, she tried to be.

Because what was to become a mechanical meanness

Was a sometimes-succeeding attempt at finding the sort

Of love that her mother never gave her

Because sometimes mothers just don’t

And from what I know, which is nothing

Her mother didn’t and I can only imagine

How much harder my great-grandmother must

Have had it to be so lovelessly lost.

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