You must laugh

I had to make the trip home to New England, heart in my throat 

hearts are the most contradictory organ. They're so delicate. They break at the drop of a word. Yet they will pump (albeit, mayhaps, arrhythmic) for 90 years straight. From womb to tomb.

But my heart floats when I run through the front lawn, through the backyard

It warms when I see my little (big, they're all taller than me now) siblings.
And we can sit around a fire pit, the firelight washes the gray from my hair
And the pain from our faces, and for a moment I see
The wisps of children we were
For a moment my father's hair is dark again
And my mother sits next to him in the shadows

For a moment, I'm eighteen again
And I've never lived in New York
And I've never had a sexual partner
And I've never been truly sad

and I was ripe with hope.
I'm still ripe with it

But a bit more cautious (ly reckless)

For now I'm just glad all our hearts are beating in time, they say:
I love you I love you I love you

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I guess we're all just dust in the end

This is a picture of where I spent the majority of my Tuesday evenings after school. It is also where I spent my Sunday mornings. 9 AM, like a suburban cuckoo clock, I went to church.

The priest always loved the Corbetts, good Catholics, four kids, the perfect number for altar serving. Some family would always flake, they'd be short a wine pourer or cross bearer. But we'd be there. With our pale blue eyes. Little white Irish Catholic ghosts. My siblings all were blonde when they were younger, all except me. I've always been a bit darker.

 We would fight over who got to ring the bell. The bell was the best job. It was the only one where you got to make noise.

After church, we would go to Dunkin Donuts (which I still go to, every morning). We'd go visit my mom's parents. They had 8th grade educations and could speak French, but they were Qu�b�cois. They hardly talked about it that I remember. They had an old attic where there were photos from the War. Most of the people in the photos were dead by the time I saw them, covered in dust.

So are my mother's parents. They've been gone almost ten years now. 

My youngest brother was baptized here. We all had our first communions here too. I didn't get confirmed into the church. My mother gave me the choice, I was sick of wandering around the graveyard while she taught CCD to the younger children, so I opted out.

My mom's buried here now, and sometimes I wander that graveyard and I remember my petulant teen self. I was so sure of everything, I was so sturdy. My mother was in the church basement, talking about Mary. Now she's in the ground beneath my feet. Dust.

They had her funeral at St. Stephens in South Attleboro. Where my brother was baptized. Where we rang the bell. Where I had first communion and confession.


 And now the church is dust. 

 It happens to us all.  
   

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