Alison

With love, forever.

i don’t want this to be it

an october day so sharp it aches;

my sweet sister-friend

whose life i have aligned full-sweep,

a hunch of bones, mouth open like a baby bird.

we are sent into the hallway for your sponge-cleaning,

and i am ashamed that my mind is on lunch

while you lie suspended between oxygen and morphine.

we have come to say goodbye.

i whisper into your good ear  

i love you, al.

a memory of your son’s third birthday party surfaces;

me a teen, ignorant of  

moppet bedlam, farts and snotty noses,   

you, serene, smiling so wide

as you cut the cake you made,

(not patience,

or catching you on a good day,

just you).

and now, your poor body has to go through this dying bullshit

making your way from living woman to memory.

in this moment you are a curled dry leaf,

a warm husk of labored huffing.

we adjust your blankets, stroke your head, wait, wait,

circled up, our desultory conversations flicker like fireflies.

your soul takes its leave breath by breath.

there’s comfort in a thought I cannot shake, that

what’s next is not day into night,

but light to greater light.