YIAYIA’S HEART

St. Thomas Aquinas College

enveloped the tongues of all who knew her, Greek and American alike, Maria, they said, Maria.

Maria sleeps in Tappan Reformed Church Cemetery but she is awake in your smiling curls and elbows. In your eyes, brown like a frappe with no sugar.

You have the heart of yellow gold, which rested on the chest of Maria.

But, where is her heart, you ask? Why does it not sing like the bouzouki? Why is all you hear the clat clat of metal under your wine-red nails?

Maria’s granddaughter, you see Yiayia in stories, her heart is words, which you cannot grab. Conversations before your birth are flowers to family, saviors for strangers,

unremembered by you.

And the heart you wear is tangible. You try to hold it,

but it doesn’t hug your finger.

It is not a memory of yours, for you never met Yiayia. It could never be her heart.