Thread by @RCdeWinter

#poetry

Odd Woman Out

"She's an artist."

That's what they told me when I saw her at the wake,
slender, striking, wearing a black leather jacket,
a jaunty beret and looking nothing like the familiar
dowdy aunts and cousins.

I liked the clothes she wore
and thought she was pretty, but old.

I was a little girl – maybe five,
and you know how that is – anyone past thirtyish seems ancient.
I'll bet she was not as old as I am now.

I remember her black hair and aristocratic features,
although at five I wouldn't have known that word.

I knew I'd never seen her before,
not at Christmastime or picnics
or any other family to-do;
I wouldn't forget a face like that.

But here she was, come to say goodbye to the dead.
Your father's cousin, they said, the artist –
and that was the end of that.

Now that I’m an artist myself I think of her often,
sorry I never saw her again, sorry I never got to know her,
sorry she was dismissed as a sport, a mutation,
a footnote on the family tree.

I’m wearing her skin: the old woman at the wake
whom the children don't know, wearing a beret of my own
and a sheepskin jacket – another minor footnote,

a family aberration easily dismissed,
consigned to the sidelines of anonymity,
because “She’s an artist.”

© 2014 RC deWinter

Published by Moon Sanctuary Press – formidable women sanctuary – skin issue – October 2019

Waving hi and thank you to all who read/shared the #poem "Odd Woman Out"