I hadn’t thought until now how our last call
was cut short
as the phone fell from your hand how I waited
in the silence for you Your last partner
picked the phone up from the floor and told me
your dad can’t talk anymore
as if speech was the last thing to leave you
she presented memonths later with
a small grey film cannisterits black lid
pressed closed like Baudelaire’s sky
on the contents of your last haircut
in trutha post-mortem cut
some clippings she had taken for each of us
four children tied with cotton
as if missing a button
she woreI noticedyour watch
next to hers on one wristand I wondered why
she got to share your last momentsseconds
And then your last words reported second-hand
Life is like a book
it has a beginning a middle and an end.
I think of the last haircut
we will all haveand whether we will
be there to look in the mirror and say Yesthat’s fine
or whethersomebody will take
a memento when we’re not looking.
tc is a poet, author, and award-winning screenwriter. tc thinks a lot about the entrapments of her generation, for her creating is a way of pushing back against establishment rhetoric and the destruction of safe social, ecological and spiritual space. tc studied poetry at Harvard and Literature at Boston University and The American College in Paris. her poetry workshops regularly feature at local schools and festivals.