Pages Written by Shakespeare

I remember when you sat by my side,

and cut a plastic plate in half to make a

mask with my students on the screen.

We cut out the eyes, and you colored it

like mine to make a lady bug. Did you

know when I made the lady bug mask,

I made it thinking of you? We added the

straws you always kept because you could

never just

drink out of a cup. You put your mask

down, and you picked up mine. You

asked, “Mommy, can I take this mask?”

I said, “Sure” because I no longer needed

it after I

recorded the lesson for other students

to see,

so they could make their own mask

for a masquerade before we were to

read Romeo and Juliet. Later, did you

hear me read about the nurse, and her

daughter lost?

Lost to time.

Lost to space.

Just a place in a line written by a great,

and they say the nurse is not complex.

When you bury your child before her

time, not enough lines write out the

reason or why. I said of the nurse,

“I understand to an extent because

we almost lost Corrie when she was

in the hospital with pneumonia as an

infant.” I counted my stars, I guess, the

way the nurse counted Juliet as her

own, but no other child replaces the

known that took up the space. My

very spirit would travel across all

time and space

just to make

certain the world knew my daughter’s

name and face behind the world’s busy

facades and story lines.

For to write of my daughter is to take

up more lines than all the ink that

ever covered the pages written by

Shakespeare.

Poem and Photos by Rebecca T. Dickinson. All work copyrighted by R.T. Dickinson, 2020-2021.