BURNING ALONE       

by Roxanne Cardona                          

Yesterday, they set her body afire,

Nancy, my first cousin, I don’t know

what became of her ashes.     

Inseparable as teens, we shared dances

at Incarnation on St. Nicholas Avenue

sang with The Supremes till our throats

hurt, even desperate crushes on Tom Jones.

I began to notice how Nancy was unable

to read the simplest books. Double digit

addition, too tough. My mom revealed

one night about her birth. How she lost

oxygen. That Nancy would always remain

the simple girl she was at ten.

For years I pretended she didn’t exist.

At seventeen, she was hospitalized.

At her darkest, she whispered; Mommy

is the devil. She has goat’s eyes.

I grew afraid to call her, refused

her visits whenever she asked. Worse,

angry, at all the things she could never do.

She died at the residence last month.

When I learned of her death, I said,

Oh, even paused for the correct number

of seconds. News of her death, locked

up my breath. I waited for the feeling,

instead remembered her first trip

to the hospital. My father dodged kicks

from her strong legs, my mom’s voice

pleaded, and my aunt’s face bathed

in tears, slapped again and again.

I did not try to help that awful day.

I folded her memory away then

like clothes I no longer wished to wear.

Tonight, the moon hits my horizon.

Its flames frighten a robin as it pulls

out the last worm, its lids heavy

with sleep. The body indistinguishable

in the weave of root arms. The bird repeats

a refrain, familiar to me as a forgotten lyric.

* * * * *

Roxanne Cardona was born in New York City. Her work has appeared in Constellations, Red Eft, Poetic Medicine-New Voices, Door Is a Jar and elsewhere. She was a teacher and elementary school principal in the Bronx. Roxanne resides in Teaneck, NJ with her husband.