An Alchemy of Words

Great-Aunt Tillie Whom I Never Knew

"Great-Aunt Tillie Whom I Never Knew"

I. Christmas, gathered around a table,

playing Hearts,

the chatter tripping over curling teams

and seeing great-aunt Tillie

on the news.

"She's chunky," my Uncle Ralph muses

as he deals.

Grandma lays the two of clubs.

"Does it make her look younger?"

My father eyes his cards, shakes his head,

and ponders this aloud.

"She must be off the vegetarian diet, then."

"She always looked so old."

Heads nod around the table.

A trick is gathered in.

"Did she say anything about him?" Grandma asks,

her last word somehow underscored.

"Just that he'll come back somehow," Les says.

"The rest of them still meet every day;

she reads the Bible with a magnifying glass."

Silence as the hand winds down

and Grandma's somehow short a card.

Then with finality, Ralph informs the table.

"She's living in an old trailer now."

"Still near Waco, though," my father interjects,

and Grandma:

"Is the trailer ten feet or twelve?"

"Ten," says Uncle Ralph, counting up the points.

II. She would show up at Grandma's place

like a flock of birds,

her battered silver motor home

resting its tires on the lawn

as she robbed the weathered garden

of its greens.

"No meat," she'd proclaim but her boyfriend,

thin and pale,

would sneak into the house at night

to eat the piece of salted ham that

Grandma had left for him on the counter

like bait.

What made you do it, Tillie?

You were always odd

but what cause you to make the leap

that made us call you crazy?

How I wish I could have seen you then,

brushed my face against your breath,

tasted your weary arrogance with my mind

and declared you only odd again.

And your boyfriend,

You married him one day, with flowers in your hair

and a Justice of the Peace reflected in the shining sides

of your Winnebago.

Now he's ashes.

His final days spent within a compound,

as he lay besieged.

Him.

The ever-penitent.

And as, eyes closed,

he spread the gasoline,

did you pray for him?

Did your failing eyes follow a bone-thin finger

across a brittle page

and read a passage from Scripture in his honour?

Or were you somehow human

and succumb joylessly to tears?

˗ˏˋ・。☆.・゜✭・.
AUTHOR'S NOTES
✫・゜・。.・。. ✭

True story: My great aunt Tillie, born and raised in small northern towns in the Canadian prairies, somehow fell in with David Koresh and the ill-fated Branch Davidian sect of Waco, Texas. When the FBI laid siege to their armed complex, she was one of the 11 adults who chose to exit the compound shortly before sh*t got real. Her husband stayed behind, ultimately dying in the conflict. I learned all of this, years later, over a casual game of cards at a family reunion.