Wednesday, February 3, 2021

After my friend entered hospice

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.