The Last Pull

 

Sometimes the crackers don’t do anything 
but remind you of how sick you really are. 
You chew them methodically, suck 
every last bit of salt from their crisp corners; 
swallow. It is hard to lie in bed all day. 
It makes the body ache with longing and inactivity. 
All the things you want to do float 
above your head like a billowing mobile, 
but no sweet music plays to accompany them. 
There is only the sound of your own slow 
breath, careful not to wake the thick 
dance of heave and pulse waiting in the back 
of your throat. You wonder if this is what it was like 
for your mother. The weekend she died, 
she was in bed the whole time. 
She said she felt a little under the weather. 
This wasn’t unusual. Your mother was sick all the time. 
Nobody expected it to be the last pull.  

When the Clock Strikes Six Feet

Before I was your mother, I knew the sleep of un-worry.
Loved a seamless kind of love that knows no blood or pulp.
On the morning I noticed them all dying, 
One black and brown boy and girl after another, I knew we’d seen it before.
Did I not feel the swell and bulge of bruised flesh the first time? 

The Second time? The third?
Is this a body burying another body inside of me?
Somewhere, another mother cries her last cry: the finale.