Poetry
For months, her determined hands
/ coaxed the sickness up and out of my lungs / until it came to rest, eventually, in her own—
I’m angrily packing to fly to my dying brother. / My husband stands and watches. As a tree / might look at someone, he looks down at me.
I wanted you, desert / you red incorruptible // parchedness perched on / the earth’s bone shoulder
It is four in the darkness and you cannot breathe. / You cannot will your chest to expand, and suddenly, / this is all right.
We lean close to admire the web / then blow on it // gently.
He has started praying – / my mother says, clenching in her hands / a blurry set of pixels.
I could tell from his voice / something was horribly wrong. / I’m okay he said over and over / in a tone that told me he was anything but.
into the folds of the purple iris which, at dawn, / becomes the hub for spider silk, filament after / filament…