BRIANA ARMSON

Our First & Last Photograph Now, how will my mother know when the Gravensteins are in season? An apple a day could never change your mind, or convince you to stay longer. Here’s a history lesson— There once was a yellow house, on a hilland a woman inside who swallowed books wholewith wit as dry as a sharpened boneand warmth that glowed like a wood stove Her husband painted portraits in oilsthick slurries of rainbows and shadowsbefore the fury of a house fire took his lifeand he could corner his signature no longer  She told me a story, that after his deaththe chickadees visited oftentheir beaks tap-tap-tapping an impossible windowtheir wing beats, a whisper—Don’t worry, I’m safe Ghost stories get me high. You and I find poetry in endings, in birds that stick out the winter.  I see poems in your eyebrows. Razor straight and so long, a comb could float through them. Salt white, and growing downward with every willow tree in Wolfville Then there’s your long blue vein, the same periwinkle as your sweater, that parts like a trailhead, and ventures off into your hairline—the sometimes vowel, always questioning.  And that used tissue, gently crumpled, in your folded hands, and that purse on your lap, even though you’re not going far today—just down the hall to lunch, from the room you like dark, so the flash goes off for our photo. Its tunnelled light will bounce between us forever now  I’ve captured a sizzling in your irises, two sunsets at once.  The last line of your obit,Let there be peace on earthdrums up a Christmas card, a snowy village scene—Ste. Croix? Said the anglophone way.  A declaration on a banner, a roll of quill-scratched parchment, held up on either side by two chickadees, both strong from winter fat.  No service, no burial, no needbut a lovely bow wrapped around your time here Who needs fuss and formalities when fallen Gravensteins are your gravestone? You’ve transcended—you get it more than anyone I’ve ever known. My bird clock just chirped in chickadeethis ghost is a glorious coincidence Thanks for stopping by
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