When Bit Came to Yorkton
Sept. 27, 1999

When Bit came to Yorkton,
she stared out at the city from my T-shirt,
at the graves of my relatives she’d never met,
who founded the city where her father was born.
Her smile as frozen in the black and white photo
as the names on those black and white tombstones.
The skin beneath my T-shirt is chilled
in this cemetery. The tombstones and the dead
beneath them feel no chill. Nor does Bit.
My flesh retains what warmth it can,
and my heart beats on.
Bit was blown up, incinerated on the border,
and now is buried in a shiny new grave in North Vancouver.
The plaque, labeled, "Monique Ishikawa"
reflects the sun but feels no warmth.
"Monique" is just too formal, a cemetery statistic.
I’ve called her "Bit" since infancy.
Now she’s a bit of eternity.
Outside of spacetime,
they keep no thermometers.