Original Artwork by Robert Rhodes

Night map (1) so we can always find the way to one another.

Acrylic, gouache and pencil on Arches paper.

 

 

Robert Rhodes

Fiona Wore A Long Dress of Hyacinths

 

 

These are the clothes

that no longer fit us,

once so smooth and new.

 

They will hang in the closet,

even after we've gone, ghosts

drifting in and out, shadows

on the sun-slanting floor.

We have no choice.

The easy days are done.

 

These clothes hide the grief we've

worn and abandoned, naive and searching,

anxious, in our way, to depart.

No one will want to touch them

or bear up beneath their terrible weight,

which often nearly drowned us both.

 

Until then, they drape us

in the addled furies of our

scorched bones, invaded brains,

our coming perpetual deaths:

stranded in these atmospheres,

circling with our apologies.

 

We'll linger in these hallways

even after we've gone,

drifting in and out, shadows

on the sun-slanting floor.

We have no choice.

The easy days are done.

 

***

 

When she was 22, Fiona wore a long

dress of hyacinths, violet and green,

the day she graduated from Bryn Mawr.

It had been her mother's and came

from Altman's on Fifth Avenue.

 

When she died, five years later,

the dress hung waiting in her closet

with her delicate golden shoes,

satin wedding slippers she

never found occasion to wear.

 

Nothing fit anymore. She barely

remembered when it had.

 

Her sister came to fetch them,

her house cold and with the dishes

still in the sink from that morning.

And so they dressed her for the fire,

a crown of roses woven in her hair.

 

***

 

These are the clothes

that no longer fit us.

We have no choice.

These days are done.

We have drowned in them,

in their coming and going,

in their drifting in and out:

once so smooth and new.

 

Their weight bears us down,

so we have to let them go.

Such a long silence settles in

between us, one awaiting the other.

 

The friend of your final moments,

a stranger who promised not to leave,

bears you close in his arms, running across

Tenth Avenue, and knows you've gone.

 

We are shadows

to one another now, sunlight

crossing the floor

when the house is cold.

 

We'll linger here

even after we've gone,

ascending by fires that reconcile

everything that burned us

 

when we were alive.