May, and Maybe

May came in and took my mother,
and I was sat in the park
holding the phone like a stone.
Spring kept happening anyway.
Birds, blossom, a dog chasing a ball.
The world doing its cheerful thing
while I learned the shape of gone.

Now it's summer, and it's doing it again.
The hospital rang. My father, confused,
a mess, his mind a kicked-over table.
He won't ever come home. They said it plainly,
like weather. He won't come home.

I keep saying maybe.
May took her, but maybe.
He won't come home, but maybe.
I've lived my whole life on maybe,
and it's the only prayer I know.

Here's the part I can't make sense of:
I don't like him. Never did, mostly.
He was cruel. In small ways and in big ways.
The kind you can name, and the kind
that follow you.
A door that stayed closed. A chair that stayed empty.
A man who gave me himself in pennies,
and the pennies had edges.
And now they want me to feel something,
so I feel everything,
and none of it matches.

I'm angry at him for being sick
in a way I was never allowed to be angry
for being small.
I'm sad for him, lost in a building
that smells of endings,
asking for things I can't give.
I want to hold his hand.
I don't want to touch him.
Both true, at the same time,
like two hands on one door,
one pushing, one pulling.

May took my mother.
Summer's taking him.
And I keep standing in doorways
waiting for the good version of him
to walk in and say it was all a mistake,
the way I waited my whole childhood
for a knock that never came.

But underneath, and this is the part
I keep almost missing:
my mother laughed. Loud, wrong, wonderful.
She loved the sun on her face and the kettle on.
She left that in me. She left me able
to love people who are hard to love.
Even him. Apparently, even him.

So I'll go to the hospital.
I'll sit in the plastic chair.
I'll hold the hand of a man
who doesn't recognise me,
angry and sad and secretly glad,
and ashamed of the glad,
and mostly, hopelessly, alive.

Because May taught me this:
grief is love that lost its address,
and I keep mailing myself to him anyway.
The door is open.
I keep walking through it.
He'll never come home.
But I'll keep the light on.
That's the part of her
that won't die in me.