Answers to the questions you always wanted to ask the departed:
(A counter poem with answers after Ellen Bass Inquest)https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/06/09/inquest-ellen-bass-poem
She loved apricots, not figs.
Olives reminded her of saltwater,
and the yellow irises—those were never hers.
Her feet stayed clean because she refused to walk barefoot,
never trusted the ground, never trusted much at all.
She did not cut her hair
because she liked the weight of it,
the way it draped across her shoulders
like something constant.
The married man was nothing—
just a name she could never forget.
She was terrible in the kitchen
because she never measured,
because she thought heat would shape things just fine.
The chickens shat everywhere
because she let them,
because she found humor in their mess.
The fog over the bridge,
she watched it,
but never spoke about it,
never pointed, never sighed.
She never trusted anyone fully.
She won raffles because fortune liked her better than she liked herself.
She sang the same lullaby her mother sang to her—
a tune no one quite remembers.
On the floor, waiting,
she thought about nothing.
That was the thing she was best at.
She could never give up kisses,
never told where she found the chanterelles.
She left too much behind
and too little at the same time.
