Psychic Intuitive

I watch as he tells a woman that her dead mother
is on the other side, happy and safe, and the woman
is smiling and teary eyed a little and so so pleased 
and then he says: and she is with her granddaughter,
and for a moment the woman looks stunned
begins to shake her head, no, she hasnt lost a child
and then the look of shock and amazement,
the psychic saying: well, she was very small
didnt come in for long, and the woman is remembering
the act she has tried to forget (a clinic or coat hanger)
and I am remembering knowing, but not really knowing,
at one month, at two months, and then doing line 
after crystalline line for three days until finally
the pain and cramping started and the second time
with the blood came a tiny pink thing 
no bigger than my thumbnail, like an itty bitty rat
but she was a daughter, and I even fished her out
of the toilet and held her lightly in my palm 
and knew, knew, but kept weeping no it couldnt be 
but it was, she was, and so someday my mother 
will be in another realm and a psychic 
will say: she is there with your daughter and I will cry 
and say yes: and she didnt come in for very long: and yes
it was I who took her life, I who held her in my hand
for a moment, then placed her back into the bowl
and flushed once, then twice, but for twenty years
she has been here, in my memory, entombed in my mind,
a girl who wears gold rim eyeglasses and likes to read 
who forgives me even now she is someone else,
even now she is mine.


 

© Jan Lee Ande