A POEM by STEPHANIE ROSE-COLETTE
snickelfritz and other names
for 20 years my grandmother had been
circling death, each time i’d say i love you,
see you soon she’d warn godwilling and if the
creek don’t rise. Bill went first, all of us rushed
to Alma, crowded into a room, bonded by blood
but awkward in grief like strangers, then dispersed
back to our separateness. the only part of his funeral
that broke me to tears was when they folded a flag
and placed it in his casket. and I didn’t know why,
i have such flimsy love for this country. i crumpled and
my father linked arms for briefness of comfort, instinctual in
a way that would be embarrassing to acknowledge. i thought
of the nickname Bill gave me, Snickelfritz, and though he
knew me at a gaping distance he was so right about it. and it
took two more aprils but Rosie went in the same way, as if they
had choreographed it. a broken hip fall and a waning surrender.
when she found out she was probably done for
she kept asking the nursing home staff if they thought
Bill has a new girlfriend up there, as if she should prepare to
win his love once more in a heavenly dimension. the funny
thing about watching someone die is how anticlimactic
it is. i guess i thought there would be more blood and gasping
but it’s mostly a quiet alls gone limp. a spreading fog
that makes believing in their ghost easy. and its okay too, if
you’re not still here. then it is just me trying to work out:
when your namesake dies, does it change the way you carry it?
for all my life i have been a Rose like Rosie was: sharptoothed,
velvety, riddled with spikes. now its stem weighted double,
resting only in my two palms. silent but penetrating as
the world in bloom. our overlapping final for me, my existence
cazimi with just their tails. a private obscenity. ill try to
understand the before me through old photos, both of
them standing carpetfeet holding my mother, sterling sterling
shining with baby love. Rosie sitting crosslegged on a college
floor, newlook cinched splaying out like a fan. Bill in a black
and white snowstorm, all alsatian cheekbones and fur mane.
and i'm still figuring it out but i suppose ill carry it the way my
mothers childhood bedroom was staged for 40 years after she
moved out, ready always for her to return.
Stephanie Rose-Colette (she/her) is a medium and writer living in Brooklyn. Her work centers the transformative nature of death and the mystery of other realms. Instagram