daily poetry: the last time

For today’s prompt, take the phrase “The Last (blank),” replace the blank with a word or phrase, make the new phrase the title of your poem, and then, write your poem. Possible titles could include: “The Last Cookie,” “The Last Roll of Toilet Paper,” “The Lasting Impression,” “The Last Word,” and/or “The Last Starfighter.”

I guarantee this won’t be the last prompt of the month. So get your poem on today, and I’ll see you again tomorrow. — Robert Lee Brewer, Writer’s Digest

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the last time

Mothers sometimes lament
in contemplative moments
you often don’t know
that something you do
is happening for the last time

There was a last time I carried you
you were at least six
and loved to be carried
although of course you could
get around perfectly well by yourself

There was a last time I tied your shoes
although this, too, was something
you were content to let me do
even after you had the skills

In Montessori education
there’s a philosophy of
”help me … do it myself.”
It is one to which
you did not ascribe

You were happy for help
or to have me do it for you
so you could focus on
whatever lit up your imagination
and the latest idea you had
and how to bring it to fruition.

The last time:

something is commonplace,
usual,
everyday,

until it isn’t.

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There was a last time I touched you,
this time in stark awareness it was the last.
I held your hand
and tried in vain to store up
a lifetime’s worth of handholding.

I used up all the Kleenex in the room
and all the light inside me
and walked out in darkness

the last time.

poem: the optimist who was wrong

For today’s prompt, take the phrase “The (blank) Who (blank),” replace the blanks with a word or phrase, make the new phrase the title of your poem, and then, write your poem. Possible titles include: “The Runner Who Walked,” “The Scientist Who Decided to Make a Monster,” “The Poet Who Loved Me,” and/or “The Teacher Who Couldn’t Learn.” If you’d prefer to write about a thing instead of a person, feel free to replace the word “who” with the word “that.” — Robert Lee Brewer, Writer’s Digest

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The optimist who was wrong

“It’s fine! I’m fine; everything’s fine!”
Rader said to me, exasperated,
as I tried to engage him in conversation
in the car after school, in the spring of 10th grade,
regarding my concerns about his mental health.
It was not something he wanted to talk about.
It didn’t seem to help him to hear I was worried.

“We’re struggling, but it’s going to be OK,”
I said to my friend and coach,
after her morning boot camp class
early in summer, as we chatted while we stretched.

Two days later he was gone.
We had done all we could,
gotten him all the help there was.
I thought we would be OK.

I was wrong.

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This poem is a darker one. It’s odd, the things that get burned into your memory when an unexpected tragedy explodes your generally neat and tidy life. That very night when Rader died by suicide, I was at a support group meeting. I boasted proudly to my friends there that my husband and I had “successfully raised (our older child — who was 18 and had that week graduated high school) to adulthood.” And we had. But as I was saying it, the worst of all failures was happening back at home. Not that that makes me a failure as a parent. I know I did the best I could. But the irony of it gets me.

I’m still an optimist. It’s how I’m wired. But I have a dark streak now. It’s easier for me to imagine the worst happening. Because now I know it can, and does.