The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: The Company Misery Loves by Kate Fox

---

And Their Forecast

–For Brandi

I can still hear my mother’s defense:
“I did the best I could at the time.”
Which was right, her worth defined

by which fork we used, or the greater necessity
of shining hair, clean skin, the “personal care”
pamphlets I threw away in favor of how

we might be with our bodies: naked, unashamed.

I relied on the past to teach you—the slant
of her arm across your chest, the cool press
of her palm to your forehead when the world

was dizzy with snow and you could barely breathe.
The whistle of the vaporizer was her wisdom, too,
its lukewarm air curled around us like licorice.

Unwittingly, she taught us well how to sicken and heal.

Now I unravel my days with her rituals and habits
as every day your face grows more beautiful, distant.
I have taught you proper manners and speech,

and once in humid summer, the Latin names
of clouds and their forecast. You can still remember
“Mammatus,” pendulous black, boiling across Nebraska.

But what else? What else have I forgotten
in these daily rhythms we raise out of silence?
We all did our best, but what if it wasn’t enough,

was never enough, for any of us?

---