The Tub is Overflowing

The Tub is Overflowing

Rinse and rewind.
Play that part again,
the one from eleven years ago,
when a ten-year-old me was holding
your thirty-five-year-old hand.
I didn’t cry at my grandmother’s funeral until
you were in the other room:
crying above the leftover stale cookies.
Rinse and fast forward.
I wonder if I’ll be ten years younger
than you when my mother dies.
When you die.
And whether or not I’ll be brave enough and hold
my dad’s hand or weep.
Because you could not spare me the sorrow
of burying my young mother.