You (for Linda)

Losing him
at the instant of diagnosis,
leaving no doubt in anyone’s
mind but hers, his grandmother
watched You wink from view
until no more than a grainy
dot on the horizon’s last
glorious performance of the
Great Withdrawal.

The picture of a small girl
insisting on her way this once,
she stamped her foot demanding
You return him. You balked,
refusing the occasion of Your
own miracle. For her, You became
you. Prayer wilted like lilies.
A flame on the altar sputtered.
The worst: false comforters
whose clichés clacked like hammers
in her ears.

What to conclude
about the inadequacy
of grief to find its own
solution – an evolutionary
conundrum with no
apparent meaning like
irrational numbers log
jamming to infinity?
The conclusion is never
satisfactory.

If then You could squeeze
an infinitesimal part of you
into a worm hole connecting
disparate points in spacetime,
it stands to reason You and she
could occupy the same heart
simultaneously, aching for each
other until a time when
she trusts you to be You again,
feeling the gravitational tug
of something resembling love
gentling her back home.