I remember the terribly delicate spread
put on for the family by the Presbyterian Women
before my mother’s funeral.
I remember the pink tablecloth and the linen
napkins.
I remember hearing
my cousin arrive from another state
with my elderly aunt
and struggling to change her shoes
in the hallway before entering.
They had put us in a very small room
where there were no windows.
We were served
small mounds of chilled salads.
There might have been
pimento cheese.
I could not eat.
(At some funerals they will place food
in the mourners’ mouths
despite crying
and wanting to follow
instead of eat.
But we are too polite
for that.)
I am in a small leaky boat.
The sea
is an upside down mirror.
Header photograph © Sarah Huels.
Kyla Houbolt has been writing for years but only recently begun sending out work in earnest. This year she has enjoyed writing micropoems and some of those appear in Black Bough Poetry, Detritus Online (forthcoming) and Nightingale & Sparrow. You can find her work also in Kissing Dynamite’s special zine, Hand to Mouth, Juke Joint Magazine May issue, and forthcoming in The Hellebore and Picaroon Poems. Kyla lives and writes in Gastonia, NC.