Your hands, invisible 
under your hair, 
shells over your ears. 
I can’t hear you.
Even now you are six 
around your mother.

Your mother 
is becoming invisible. 
She’s 76— 
morning pills, thinning hair. 
She walks right past you, 
whispers nothing in your ear. 

She never wore ear-
rings, lipstick. This mother 
stunned you 
subtly—invisible
make-up, undone hair. 
More beautiful at 56 

than some women at 36. 
Your hands cover your ears—
those pills mean nothing. Her hair
isn’t thinning. Your mother 
isn’t inching toward an invisible 
circle on the calendar. You 

forget death, drinking your 
coffee, reading the news, six  
a.m. It’s there, an invisible 
deadline taunting in your ear—
your mother 
won’t be in your hair 

forever. Thinning hair. 
Morning pills. You 
will lose your mother, 
as you lost your father at six-
teen. Put your ear 
to the phone, speak to her invisible 

face. Your mother used to comb your hair,  
invisible snags that made you 
cry. You were six. She soothed into your ear.

Melissa Fite Johnson, a high school English teacher, is the author of A Crooked Door Cut into the Sky, winner of the 2017 Vella Chapbook Award (Paper Nautilus Press, 2018). Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Pleiades, Broadsided Press, Whale Road Review, and elsewhere. Find her online at melissafitejohnson.com