(for my grandmother, Anna Marie Nyberg Haag)

My father used to say,
“Write when you get work,”
long before my sister

and I were old enough
to do so. It took years
before I realized that to

our father, raised as he was
during the Depression,
the sentiment was serious,

that work could be difficult
to get, to hang onto, and
when it happened,

it called for a letter to the
folks back home hoping
to hear from you.

Decades later, his mother,
on her manual cursive typewriter,
often ended her letters,

“Don’t forget to write,”
eager as she was to hear
from family spread out

farther than she would have
liked. My grandmother
was never happier than

when we all gathered in one
place, delivering squeezy hugs
so tight that the glass-faceted

brooch in the center of her
chest would pierce ours.
She’d feed us her best

Swedish meatballs and
good brownies, only to
have us scatter again

like dandelion seeds,
leaving her at her typewriter,
waiting for word—

any word at all—
to fall onto a page
and make its way to her.