In an Empty Green Room
– by Gabi Clayton
there are times now
when I recognize
that I have forgotten you
spaces now
where you are absent
even in the everyday minutiae
until my finger brushes against
the tag from the crematorium
kept in the same glass tray
I keep earrings in
and I recognize once again
that you will always be seventeen
you live now with my father
in an empty green room
where I am always twelve
I do my best to fill it with light
but that must be for me
mother and daughter
as it is always too late
for father and son
© 2017 Gabi Clayton
In an Empty Green Room was my response, decades later, to the death of my father when I was twelve and the suicide of my youngest son when he was seventeen.
It was written in June 2017, and read at a Creative Colloquy writer’s forum in Tacoma, WA soon after that.