Breathing
The warmth from the electric fireplace
bore across the bed, stifling me.
But you seemed not to mind it,
to curl towards it. You said tonight
you wanted to sleep and wear away
the headaches of the day,
so I laid still, your neck resting
heavy in the crook of my arm,
hair, ear, chin on my chest,
rising and falling in
beated measure all night.
My thrill in this state was to listen
to the cadence of your silent living
entwine itself with the sounds of stillness
in your house, an invisible ballet
within the murkiness of the night hours.
When you asked at sunup when you woke
why I went without sleep,
I said I couldn't shun the night's
quiet brilliant moments filled with your breathing,
wrapped softly in such rhapsody.
The warmth from the electric fireplace
bore across the bed, stifling me.
But you seemed not to mind it,
to curl towards it. You said tonight
you wanted to sleep and wear away
the headaches of the day,
so I laid still, your neck resting
heavy in the crook of my arm,
hair, ear, chin on my chest,
rising and falling in
beated measure all night.
My thrill in this state was to listen
to the cadence of your silent living
entwine itself with the sounds of stillness
in your house, an invisible ballet
within the murkiness of the night hours.
When you asked at sunup when you woke
why I went without sleep,
I said I couldn't shun the night's
quiet brilliant moments filled with your breathing,
wrapped softly in such rhapsody.
Your Cancer
You stood in your backyard,
shovel in your hands, blue and white
skirt swaying around your legs,
cleaning up after the dog.
"I'm not afraid to die," you said
with a smirk on your face.
I shivered just like when weeks before
you said you thought your son wouldn't
make it past twenty.
Months later you told me
holding back tears at nineteen
they diagnosed you at stage five,
when the doctors all but tell you to
have your affairs in order, to tell
everyone around you
to prepare for the worst.
I sat across from you at the wooden
table, oblivious to all my own thoughts,
as you told me your daughter's favorite
time was then, sitting all day,
sometimes with her grandma, sometimes
with a nurse, in the hospital
at your bedside,
glad only as a child could be to be away
from school. Paging through your receipts you
told me her father hadn't once visited you
those weeks and months,
and i thought of throwing up, thinkng
only this child might be
the kindest person
In the world at that or any moment.
I cried like at a burial or wonded animal,
seeing that brave girl at your bedside,
eleven now, and wanted your cancer,
wanted it to infuse my genes
and to rip that year from you
so you'd never have
to tell this story again or, selfishly,
to rip her kindness for my own
to help me fight through my own
meager desires.
