on contemplating your death, a poem

ON CONTEMPLATING YOUR DEATH

 

(originally published in the Panhandler Magazine)

 

This is not heroism, this slow

nod to absolutes, numb acquiescence

to facts.  I perform the worst

 

sort of cowardice: cutting the lines

free before it’s over. I can feel

the steps away from you, the slow

 

casting off from love, the mournful

horns, departing from this foggy

land of illness.  When you didn’t

 

know me, when your hands danced

above the forgotten teacup, squeezing

a lemon primly into thin air,

 

you had a kind of ruddy stubbornness

I was shocked to see.  After that,

your pale and knowing return was

 

anticlimax.  You had gone another

way, in your blue cap, your skin hot,

glossy as if with fever, the surface

 

papery-soft but no longer familiar.

I hoped you were angry once more,

even as you slept.  I expected to

 

cry more, to feel something else,

to be more like you.  Nothing here

is how I imagined it, not this slow

 

nod to absolutes, not this languid

overflow of salt water — aching

bones, a past no longer claimed.