Visions of Johanna

 And these visions of Johanna,
they kept me up past the dawn - Bob Dylan

Whenever I find myself mop and bucket in hand
in the common areas of our building—
Great Grandma Johanna is with me again.

Her gathering tears are bits of shell, crushed along a black sand beach.

We’ve come so far from that tenement house 
in Over-the-Rhine; a ghost of a place 
on Oliver Street, though I walk there in my sleep.

No one knows what the universe holds for us,
but we guess as often anyway.

How different would it all be now
if she wasn’t pregnant,
and she didn’t trip over that bucket—

but there she is in the hallway again, stuck in a doomloop
and there she is on the floor—who found her like that?

All her hard work undone in a pool of blood.