Heredity
The screen door slapped
against the back door of the house.
Dinner done,
I went outside to have cool night air
for dessert. The back door light
cast my shadow on the wall of the garage.
I puppeted the dusky form
back and forth across the wall.
Slowly I realized it wasn’t me anymore.
It was you –
the tilt of the head,
the skinny calves,
the sweep of the hand.
You’d been gone these past three years,
yet there you were
taking over my shadow,
the mother to the daughter still.
– Priscilla Kirkpatrick
“Poets of Boca Grande”