11:28pm.
It’s a Wednesday and I think of her, of us sitting together in the funeral parlour foyer a month earlier. I don’t know why the memory comes but I’m glad it did.
It was the first time we’d seen each other in so long. It was like watching a lightning bolt be tired. We don’t talk often, now that the work halls we share every day aren’t the same, but I wish I could tell her how much her chutzpah echoes.
I sit in the moment as I remember it. Things we know are ahead for friends we love, hover very near. Too near, like obnoxious, invasive relatives too-publically asking questions they don't deserve answers to. A cruel handful of facts we can’t disown. So we do own them. Because we must. Quietly but honestly.
The conversation turns general, but all I can think as we make our mourner small talk, is that she has no idea how much she has taught me about what it means to look hard things in the eye. For ourselves as much as the people we care about. She doesn't know how present she is with me these days when I try not to look away from them, though in this moment there are so many and they’re everywhere.
A teacup settles back into place on a saucer. Her bright, quick smile is a Keep Calm and Carry On as the rain starts to speckle outside. I feel like a baby step in the company of a fierce stride, and not for the first time - there in her atmosphere, even though the world on the other side of the glass feels like a hand grenade in the palm of a mad man - I remember for a minute how to feel safe.
For Mon.
She has a tall ponytail and sneakers.
Somehow she always means business.
And whatever it is that makes
Guest speakers sit straighter
in the chair she has set
for them before they speak
or champagne sparkle in the sun,
She is that.
I am in awe, honestly,
of the everyday steps she takes:
Battle-breaching, Captain America leaps
into the chaos and company
of often very broken things.
She is what my mum calls a “can do” girl.
She is a mum, too,
in more ways than she knows.
Daughter like a mirror with
an essay due Monday,
her unanswered messages
could not condemn
though an opposition buy the jury
And have the judge thrown in for free.
She answers with action,
loves fiercely with
the language of showing up,
and staying.
Mon?
Mon can do anything.
If someone told me
she once used a cobra as a hair tie,
I would think
twice or ten times
before arguing.
She is the kind who makes clocks
tremble to tick in consideration
of what she can do with a minute
and matching stationery.
Her blunt sunshine is a lifeline
when all the other lines go dead.
And when she picks up?
God, watch her go.
Barbie pink blazered, blue eyed
Butter of heads
with million dollar budgets and
no common sense,
she is the queen bee
of her own heart’s honey,
moving between all us flowers and weeds,
tending every need in their order,
Ever buzzing brilliance.
She who always stays behind,
Yet somehow leaves none.
© Erin Brown 2025
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