by gRj
She loved in dollar signs,
each act of kindness
a receipt waiting to be signed.
Look, her hands would say,
as they pressed bills into palms—
See how the light catches
the halo of my giving.
A year of her love
was a year of ledgers:
flowers tallied against apologies,
dinners weighed by their cost,
never by the silence
that followed the first bite.
(Even the poor knew her name—
how she’d linger after handing them a twenty,
waiting for the God bless you
like a comma in her script.)
Oh, R*
your heart is vast as a department store,
bright and full of price tags.
You donate to feel the echo
of your own echo—
Saint R*, so generous, so kind—
while the rest of us starve
for something you can’t buy:
a love that doesn’t
keep change.
-Catharsis