Sisters Playing Oh Hell! With Their Late Mom’s Cards

She watches us, aware the game will end,
appalled at how indifferently we wait.
Our cards are surveyed by the china angel
who, like our mother’s uninvited angel,
knows that this silent ritual will end
with practiced see-you-soons and I-can’t-waits.

She would have bid fourteen; we each bid one.
We were her orphans in that awkward air,
reminded that her love could be postponed.
Feeling her here will have to be postponed:
Now one of us, cackling from having won,
appears too unrestrained to be her heir.

Next year, when one uncovers in her breast
a trinket-sized and un-regiftable lump,
will she, like mother, never tell the rest?
Sipping our teas, we take a rest from rest,
our cards like funeral pamphlets clasped abreast.
Our only tell’s a dropped-in sugar lump.