Bob Lucky

Death is No Magician

I say goodbye to my mother as if she were sitting right there at the kitchen table drinking a cup of coffee. See you later, Mom, I say. Then I go to a nearby café because I don't like my mother's coffee. How's it going, the barista asks. Things happen, I say. Like what, she asks. My mother died, I say. She feels so bad for me she gives me a chocolate chip cookie. When I get home my mother still isn't there.

dog days
watching the grass grow
yellow in the sun

Note: Previously published in Presence #59, 2017