The Time of Year: a Corrie Poem

It’s that time of year, Darling, when I must

be creative in the way I decorate. The

stores put out their fall decor, and some

metal art of purposefully rusted trucks

with pumpkins are already on sale. The

stores have turkeys and foxes

for Thanksgiving tables

while red, white, and blue

hair bows sit on the five dollar rack.

Five feature white stars with

sparkles, and Darling, it reminds me

of you. Given the chance when you

dance, you’d toss glitter in the sky,

and smile and raise your arms.

I hear you say, “But Mommy,

we can clean it up later.”

I know you, and unless you’re

at school, you fail to confess the

mess you leave in your room. On

the Sunday before you leave, you

make a good show because the

floor is clean, and most toys are

put away. Then it is the time of

year when stores have out the

red, white, and blue to last from

Memorial Day through July.

Now as I prepare to buy your

decor, I tuck away the memories

of the time after last Memorial

Day when I’d give anything to

have glitter still on the floor,

and you say, “But Mommy …”

The silence across the room

makes me want to scream as

dolls sit and look at me,

and you have the last laugh

when I look under your bed.

I spot some toys still

shoved under when only four

days before you’d “cleaned.”

If only for the moment when

we see the color of a butterfly’s

wings, I laugh because you got me.

It’s that time of year, Darling, when I

must be creative in the way I decorate,

and I guess you’d say, “Mommy feels

a little better now.” I don’t dread the

summer days as much as last year

after you’d gone away. I still miss you

everyday, so I focus on all the things

for which I care: your father, your brother,

my job, the farm, writing,

… and you. So I focus now on how I

will decorate your resting place.

It’s the time of year, Darling, when I

must be creative in the way I decorate.

The craft stores put out scarecrows as

high as your knee, or as tall as your head.

Some are little girls with dark pink bows

wrapping around straw hair, and others

emulate a popular mouse. It’s not time

for those decorations. Not yet. Other

than back-to-school sales and the

ice cream commercial where it sings,

“It’s her first day of the first grade”

that makes me scream if I fail to

change the channel quick enough;

there isn’t any signature seasonal

decor to use at your resting place.

I think of decorating with yellow and

light orange sunflowers to mix with

pink to give off the impression: It’s still

summer, but it is a transition. The only

sunflowers in the craft store I see are

the wilted ones that come just before

November surrenders to a winter sun.

I know then sunflowers cannot define

decor of the in between summer season.

Mermaids cover the for sale shelves. I

turn my back, and I see a girl mer

child pulling her knees—covered in

turquoise fins—to her chest. She day-

-dreams, and I think: I want to use

sunflowers because they remind me of

the first dream you’d sent to me

in the weeks after you’d gained your

wings where I see the field far behind

our house full of orange and yellow

sunflowers in later summer. I have

no desire for mermaids now. Yet,

I feel a hand, with just a touch of

pink baby skin left in the palm,

take mine. Just as a dog, with a

weight lifter’s chest, pulls the

leash, your spirit yanks me back

to the clearance shelves where

mermaids sit on and sleep inside

clams. “Mommy, can we get these

mermaids? I like them.” The turquoise

fins calm me as some doctors say

blues and their cousins do. Then I

see a short flash of: a girl in a

mermaid dress I’d struggle to

put on, an ambulance, and …

… and some words are best left

to the memories and nightmares

given to me, but Darling …

Turquoise possess a power to calm

people, they say, as blue and its

cousins do. I know you prefer for me

to remember your last Christmas when

I’d said, “You don’t need another mermaid

doll.” You’d been given a mermaid doll

from the nineteen nineties, so I ordered

a bright green tail and shells online

specially designed for your rare mermaid.

Look again at the shelves, and view how

each mer child possesses brown hair

like you. Select one that sleeps in a clam,

and I say, “This is a start.” I’ll add mermaids

for this time of year.

Poem for my daughter, Corrie, by Rebecca T. Dickinson

Copyright R.T. Dickinson, 2021