Just before he died, my daughter asked him, “What is your favorite color?”<\/p>\n
And he said it was yellow.<\/p>\n
“Send me a sign when you’re gone,” she said.<\/p>\n
He nodded weakly, though he appeared to dismiss her.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
“I saw a yellow bird. Here’s a picture,” she texted.<\/p>\n
And then the yellow butterflies flitted by.<\/p>\n
She never doubted Grandpa’s sending a sign.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Who watched your wife die for 15 years, the last five<\/p>\n
under my roof, as we both gasped at her final inhale?<\/p>\n
Who changed your i.v. every 8 hours when they almost killed you?<\/p>\n
Wasn’t it I who wet your lips when they were dry, set your game up<\/p>\n
when the sickness took away every last pleasure you relied on<\/p>\n
to help you forget, tuck her under your pillow at night when you dreamed<\/p>\n
her young, dreamed her beside you, spooned in sleep of the living?<\/p>\n
Didn’t I watch boxing and Gold Rush<\/em> and the Angels games<\/p>\n with you, despite my mad thirst to work, work, work to forget, to pacify?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Where was my sign?<\/em><\/p>\n I cried at the stop light, the traffic a crawl.<\/p>\n Did I kiss him enough, tell him I loved him?<\/em><\/p>\n And I saw it then, the cloud break, the golden rays at dusk,<\/p>\n last shudders of daylight, like yellow hands upon my heaving shoulders.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I see you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Just before he died, my daughter asked him, “What is your favorite color?” And he said it was yellow. “Send me a sign when you’re gone,” she said. He nodded weakly, though he appeared to dismiss her. “I saw a yellow bird. Here’s a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":196,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-88898","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-half-marathon-poem"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88898","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/196"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88898"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88898\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":89136,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88898\/revisions\/89136"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}