melody

the week before.

For weeks, we waited for the word.

To live or die. Every eye

from every friend from every vast

continent was fixed on her hospital bed.

We waited. They prayed.

Prayers of confidence across pixels, sure

she would spring up, new-formed

from that hospital bed.

She would shake off the pain that

haunted her lungs each day, in and out.

Heavenly rays would expel the phlegm

from organs heavy and slick. She would breathe.

Pray, they said. Just pray for her.

So I turned my eyes to heaven and saw

my ceiling, scattered blurry stars and

false constellations. Words

coated my throat. Weighed my bones.

Please, I whispered. Please.

Each word dripped back, dribbled

poison in my ears. Please.

the day after.

I woke from whimpering dreams.

Sheets tangled my legs. In the pale light

in the dark room, I saw the news.

It sank to my spine as I curled

around the pinch, the loss. Limbs moved

slowly. Through the wall at my head,

my brother rocked and keened.

His wail was formless as the first sea.

Sun streamed through cold panes.

We sat together and stared

at the stripes in the rug, as the keen

turned to warbled song. It is well.

The mucus coating her lungs

drowned her in that bed. Alone.

Husband and brother buried her in dry dirt,

Alone with the coffin and heavy sun.

Every confident word reversed.

Her pain is gone, now.

And it was.

But ours was not.

two years after

We mourn apart. Stories are sounds

across oceans, soft and heavy.

Friends meet at her grave with hands full

of cold soda, the drink she called "rum,"

just to mess with people. We remember

the miracles she saw, the pain she suffered,

the stories she loved, no matter how odd,

the people she cared for with every drop of strength.

I light a candle and watch it burn.

My last words to her were shallow,

and now this. But I have learned the value

of lament, of grief, of mourning the loss of her--

of her voice on the other end of the line.

We perch on the couch with her favorite sushi.

We laugh and share rum as I share stories

of her and stories in which she found joy.

I do too, now. I can tell the stories

and miss her, and not fall.