my grandfather, mother, and I sat at the edge of her bed,
watching her die.
waiting for her to die,
the bedroom a church.
ashen and sunken and seizing each breath,
sucking them in,
she lay, a squid under the blankets.
just a head and long, long limbs
tiny, the bones inside already abandoned ship.
my grandfather rocked
each palm clinging to the other arm’s elbow
crying and rocking, a mother soothing a baby.
if you have someone to love, you will suffer
and if you don’t have someone to love, you will suffer too.
but if you love someone too much, that’s really too bad.
I stared at him as he cried,
couldn’t stop staring. couldn’t stop feeling nothing
as the entire room sank around me.
***
Rebecca is currently living far from my Rhode Island home
in Portland, Oregon; living the American Dream, walking in the rain
with her black lab puppy, reading copious amounts of Raymond Carver, and,
of course, writing (because what else in the whole wide world is there
to do?). These little ditties are the yield of her first December in
Portland. Please, enjoy reading them as much as I enjoyed writing them
out of my system.
