Mother Nurture
We came home that night
and sat in the dusk and din
of a contrived room
meant to conjure and extend life
with the wisp and pop of machines
spawning tangled tubes like serpents in the sands
of the Hippocratic oath that swore to
keep you breathing in a mortal conch.
He sat bowed and bleeding and his
squared palms smoothed calm and affection
into sutured skin, swollen with mortality.
And I thought this must be what love is like,
the angles of his face stenciled in the lampshade light
as I watched and waited for wasted words
suspended in an awful silence.
You had reached out once when we were alone
across the oak table confettied with papers and pills
and clasped my hand in yours
pleading and gasping for just one more chance
to love the little boy who almost wasn’t for another day.
You broke character then
When you told me you were afraid of dying
When you told me you’d miss knowing his children most
When you asked me if I really loved him
How could I not? It’s such an easy thing to do –
define the mysteries coiled in such simple curls
laid resigning in my lap.
He didn’t cry, much. Weeping only at pictures where he remembered you
as the child he’d raised, not the woman that made him, made him mine.
The day you died, I assumed new roles
eclipsed in a shadow far too wide to be seen
And I wish you were here to assure me that I deserve to be standing still
When the light comes flooding back.
You and I were not so different; we both loved the same man enough
To suffer for his smile. | 
