Im Her Passing

She is probably lying in her bed right now,
asleep.
Her heavy Japanese eyelids collapsed
from the drugs and disease
that are at war within her veins;
body.
Her slender frame masked
by the hand-knitted afghan;
blue and red and yellow and brown
yarn weaving astrological patterns
over her shoulders, arms, chest.
Her skin;
you can still see the light tan
loosely draped around her brittle skeleton;
the soft epidermis;
valleys and mountains;
the folds of time
stretched across her face
as I look into her withering brown eyes.
She sheds a tear;
not for her and not for me
but for what will be missed
as time moves on
and she collapses into everything.

The dusk of Wednesday.
Across the street sits a steeple;
Little children
and their mothers
and their fathers
and their grandmothers
and their grandfathers
filter out through the arch doorway
with little black crosses
thumbed into their foreheads.

The difficult task
of raising and lowering her chest
is painful to watch;
the whir of mechanical parts
manufacturing oxygen;
the leaky sound
of escaping gas
at perfectly timed intervals;
Bach would have written a requiem.

April showers bring May flowers
but I don’t want to look into the pine box.

She is still there;
I can see her puffy black hair
peeking through the kitchen door;
the broken English phrases
spilling love and adulation;
I can still see her
tending to the sick boy;
he barely notices