Our Elegy

by Hayes Cooper





               Flipping back through the chapter I just read

on elegy, I skim each paragraph

from the bottom up. Mom, I want to find out

how to do this



               because this is what they say is done. Except

it’s too early to do this to you. You’re still here tonight,

roaming around the house, picking up a framed

family photo



               then setting it down, turned away by a row

of glassed faces. Our standard poodle Sirius

follows, helping you hunt down the familiar

object that means



               something. We named him together: the runt

of the litter turned dog star, brightest in the sky.

They say elegy claims this power to transform,

to name a death



               otherwise and find consolation in a fable.

You don’t need me to make a story. You write

it yourself, purple inking the whole house

in wobbled hearts:



               your love all over the couch, your jeans, the left

thumb knuckle you bend for a smoother canvas.

Dad says you’ll ruin the furniture, but I hope

you know it’s me



               sneaking you pens. They say anger,

too, marks the elegiac. But when I rush home

to save you from your world, you stand there beaming

to see me, where



               you’ve always been. At home. So I fail anger

and smile back at you. Nor are we two shepherds

with a lifetime of companionship to mourn

in hexameters,



               nor am I allowed to grieve the absence

of your old mind as stasis. We find new ways to talk

each day, and the more I learn to see you,

the slower you fade,



               so we may never finish building the genre

of what we would say to each other. I’m sorry

for the time we had a late lunch at the sushi restaurant

that changed its name



               (we always used its old name anyway)

and you wept when I asked why you couldn’t remember

something that I can’t remember now, and I only tried

to get you to stop.





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