Broken memories

Oh, look: I found a picture of a bed, 

Like that old four-poster bed, 

The one both Mom and I 

Had been conceived in; 

The one I lay in many nights, 

Waiting for you to come home 

From whatever gig you played 

And whatever woman caught your fancy 

Once your sax was packed away; 

The one that you tossed off our deck 

So many years ago in fury, 

When I finally chose 

Myself instead of pain, and left you,

Taking the one thing that was clearly mine; 

The one whose headboard’s finial 

(So lightly curved, and topped, 

Like the four others on the posts 

With that three-dimensional fleur-de-lis) 

Broke like your venom upon landing

Where you threw it.

That bed I kept, though broken, 

Now shelters in my daughter’s home — 

The daughter I had later 

With the man who loves me still — 

And holds from time to time, 

Our granddaughter when she comes to stay. 

And though she’s not my daughter’s child, 

And my daughter isn’t yours, 

That broken bed still wraps her 

In the memories of love 

From my grandmother, who bought it, 

Through four more generations 

To the granddaughter who sometimes leaves 

The home so far away she wasn’t born in 

To sleep in this old bed that she — 

Unlike my daughter, me, and mom — 

Was not conceived in.