Paper Fan Poem by Deborah DeNicola

Twilight on a night in May
and I'm holding the fan you made for me
on Mother's Day when you were six.

Twelve years it's lived on the far wall of my bedroom,
pinned like a wing behind the Polish marquetry,
and Aunt Adeline's Black Madonna
of Czestochowa draped in the Easter palms.

Popsicle handle. Five spidery-splayed
toothpicks hold the bowed fan in place.

I see the line your pencil drew which your scissors missed,
then your design brush-stroked on, Asian-ish, pinched pastels
in paper crepe glued randomly on spewed black ink.

It's Friday night— you've got your own spiffed-up car
and you're out with your favorite girl—last
hometown summer you surf on the tide to a Freshman year.

I stroke my fingers across the fan and want to tell you now
what matters most is what you feel. How it's always
the difference of life or death.

I tuck the curved arch back behind Our Lady's mantle
while a chill belies the season. What we have left

is innocence, the gold-inked edges
of this paper fan, incandescent behind the darkness.

It will be here when you visit.