Dear Coroner:  Finding a Woman’s Life in All this Mess (for Nita Pierson, 1919)

They might have called me 
crazy.  They don’t know— 
my daughter’s hand slipped
from her father’s, so far from me, slipped beneath–
No, I dare not say, born fourteen years
after my life began. Her father
once painted her bundled
in blankets and well-crafted 
lines and points for my heart.  
I have not forgotten the art
of letting go
as now my blood flows
filling a deep bath.  I cannot stop.

Sixteen years devotion
to my girl, tracing her life-
line on crooked cobblestone streets
where horses beat a rhythm of our wants
alongside rattling trams. Collision
of generations.  Her father, once my husband,
sends decorated postcards, slanted sentences, 
hiding his East Coast dinner parties. I squint
to interpret.

Don’t tell me how she died—not the death
of soldiers shipping off from the New York harbor 
to war and returning riddled
with shrapnel. They don’t write
their own obituaries. My girl only 16, pressed
crinoline and shiny Mary Jane shoes,
the ones I always wanted, never predicted her death.

Call me mad, as madness captures 
the sonnets I write to life
along city streets, earthquaked
rows of homes, splintered and charred, rebuilt
as I look out my window
From Geary to Larkin, down to Polk
women who walk 
from bar to bar, women who declare
their loves in writing, scorned,
lose the I on newly built curbs.

Clang in the ear, chatter,
fog sitting over the hills. I dropped
my daughter’s palm
at the train’s side, her bonnet covered
her tears, melted
my news story I needed to finish 
before I came to San Francisco.
I have not lost
the art of telegraphs from unknown 
men behind cigar stench.
Story due in an hour.  STOP. 
While death sits inside me.

Women who are called crazy
seldom wander back alleys 
to talk themselves back to breath. I took
a man’s hand and spent years alone
with words and a child’s wishes
for food and laughter. I read
my hopes in story lines I penned, 
tint of ink across my brow,
rubbed off on my fingers.

I know someone saw 
my name, if not in lights,
then in bold headlines	
and pain. Today I write my final
story, meet deadlines
and send undeliverable messages to my daughter,
buried somewhere on the coast opposite me—

A book of my last sonnets—I make 
the first cut, and then the second
What I don’t know 
about arteries    my next book’s
theme.  So I turn on the gas
shutter the windows 
and wait    weightless
worthless        a spirit
slipping away.   

Dear Coroner,
	submit this obituary as an official
	document and pack up 
	whatever trinkets remain.