They took out my mother’s heart
and put it back in 
at a slightly different angle. 

She batted the air and waved him away
when the minister arrived for the extreme unction.

So much for salvation. 

Outside, crews were dimpling 
Main Street with flags and banners.
My mother’s nurse had glitter in her worried hair.

A score of years later, I sit at her desk, capacious 
enough to hold our secrets,
its surface cluttered and worn, unlike all I knew

of her stacked bills, arranged neatly as her coif,
wood polished to a cat’s eye sheen. In a musty drawer,
I find a note in unfamiliar script: “To My Beloved . . . “

Then a troll tumbles out, black marbles for eyes,
carroty hair sticking straight up, waving a tiny pennant
of truth: she loved the church organist more

than the rest of us.
When it came time to divide her stuff,
he got the house. 

I got the desk and the troll.