I wake up drugged

with memory: Stella in her baggy

t-shirt carrying a green bean casserole

that no one will eat; my mother making

pronouncements.  Long ago the family

gathered around the dining room table

saved for such occasions; the holidays

blurring, like looking at Christmas lights

without my glasses; pancake breakfasts

early mornings after Midnight Mass.  The Christmases

I remember with my own daughter

are always the ones where she was

out of control.  Or I was. Yelling at her when she was

seven and eight, nine or ten, the living room window

opened to the patio below, voices

echoing.  Everything I did

or didn’t do magnified, never seeing my life

for what it was, for what I wanted

it to be.