We were up all night,
the nurse says.
She is asleep now.
Come back tomorrow.
Why wake at all, my friend?.
Why face this gruesome
dying another day?
All your horses now sold.
The house and husband gone
Every organelle betrays you.
When my man understands Spring
will not light his brown eyes again
and the ants have carried off
every trace of his last ham sandwich,
he looks from our breakfast table
past the bowl of oatmeal into
the pod of pills.
Shoulder to shoulder we fix
our eyes on those ripened ovules.
I can think of no reason for him
to down them except to keep
with me another day.
I would not do it for him
as we once agreed and now
he will not do it for me.
The air feels stale and hushed.
Alone we two now on this moon.
One of us now untethered.
When they carry him out, one says:
there appears to have been
no struggle.
I tell her nurse I'll return tomorrow
but I do not. I walk on the shore
and meet a mess of driftwood,
one bleached skeleton raises two
crooked arms as if it wants
to hold me.
I come here because they cannot
be the fleshy one in this dream.
Because it is a gift I am offered.
I want to receive it.
