I don’t know what I expected to find
standing on the corner of a residential street
in Charleston, West Virginia, the dome
of the capitol peering up in the distance.
That is not surprising, the orange brick home
was much larger than I had assumed, but you
lived there only a few years before leaving
Quarrier Street to start a life of your own, a home
far larger than the one you shared with
your seven siblings, six sisters and a brother
all a clothing merchant could afford on Lee Street.
I wanted to knock on the door, ask
to see the room where my mother lived
through her high school and college years,
for that is the you I know, the young woman
in the college yearbook photo, because I can
only piece together my family like
a mosaic with no instructions or plan save
my imagination, and the picture
of your gravestone, my fingers tracing
your name as thought it was your cheek
which is forever etched in my soul.