Mary Pauline Breedlove
1918 ~ 1937

Mary, I’ll never know you
or much about you.
I met your grandmother
whose middle name was yours,
and a picture of us proves it
though I don’t remember her.
Your brother and sister are gone,
and I loved your parents dearly,
But I never asked what you were like
before the years of illness.
I remember only the story
of the broken thermometer
and your rolling the mercury
between your fingers.