The Dead Are Not Silent

Long after their eyes turn opaque as frosted glass,

their faces still and empty,

long after the gravestones’ chiseled faces,

long after the mourners’ tears

the dead return.  First, they creep in, and I imagine

I hear a whisper, but when I turn, there is no one there.

Sometimes it is a touch light and soft on my neck

or the lick of cold fingers on my arm.

Gradually, they grow bolder.  They come to my room

at night.  I wake up to find them standing above me:

my mother, her face unlined now a face

from which suffering has been erased.

Her eyes are as full of love as they were

when I could go to her every day.

Sometimes my father is there; his body

seems irrelevant and indistinct, not broken

as it was when he still lived.

I’d visit him every night after Mama died

so he wouldn’t be lonely.  We didn’t

talk much.  We’d watch his favorite

program, Murder She Wrote. I knew

he was happy to have me there

as I am happy to have him visit me now.

Finally, my sister appears.  She hasn’t

even been gone a year.  I can tell she knows

I miss her.  The room is crowded with the dead.

They move in and are a comforting presence.

Each day I mention them, remind myself

of something they did or said.  I hear them rustle

as they move, their voices like silk scarves

that trail behind me wherever I go.

Maria Mazziotti Gillan