Postcards

When was the last time you mailed a postcard?

My mother kept the ones I sent her. My sister mailed them back

to me after my mother died. I had forgotten I had written

so many small notes to my mother. The price of stamps

kept changing. I was always mentioning on the back of cards

I was having a good time. I can remember the first time

I lied to my mother. It was something small maybe the size

of a postcard. I went somewhere I was not supposed to go.

I told my mother I was at the library but I was with Judy

that afternoon. Her small hand inside my hand. 

I was beginning to feel something I knew I would never write

home about.

Copyright © 2014 by E. Ethelbert Miller. Used with permission of the author. This poem appeared in Poem-A-Day on February 24, 2014. Browse the Poem-A-Day archive.