Maybe I’ll never die.
Or maybe I will.
Unknown pulses push through
the space I’m also in.
Thank you.
Love is different than I
expected. Or maybe
this is something
else, something as yet
undiscovered and it
is my job to describe it
and make it real?
Well, it’s nice and terrible
and begins in the blood
at the back of my throat.
The leaves fall into the lake.
My daughter sighs in her sleep and says,
just now as I’m writing in this notebook,
“I kinda don’t feel like saying it.”
She burrows deeper
into her sick daytime sleep,
mouth just open,
sweaty hair starfished
on the borrowed pillow.
The fan circulates
the air coming in from the
open, screenless window.
Everyone else has gone
on a hike to the falls.
I went outside
and pressed my ear
to an oak tree.
I heard nothing
but my own skin
scraping the bark.
Another leaf falls,
but the lake caught the sun
and sent shards of its light
into the room. I asked my daughter,
“Did a bird fly in?” And she said, “No.”
Then, “Well, maybe.” She sleeps now.
My father has stage three
non-small cell lung cancer.
I called him and left
a message. When you pass through
that membrane we can’t
perceive you clearly
or maybe at all.
Will it be lonely? For you
or for us?
We probably have a few months
before we find out.
It’s hard to perceive
how the time after will
feel to whoever I am
then. Who I am now
will be gone. My daughter’s
mouth moves but this time
she doesn’t say anything.
I’m not sad, really, and I’m trying
out gratitude rather than panic.
She turns, stretches, wakes a little
at the noises of the other children
returning from the falls.
One says, “I’ll just wait
in the crazy room,” and the other yells,
“I’ll meet you down there!”
My daughter, fully awake now, looks at me.
“I didn’t know everyone
left,” she says. “I heard them.
Or I thought I did.”
“Were you dreaming?” I ask.
She thinks about it.
“I just saw a bird!”
She points to the open window.
“Or maybe it was just something
falling from the trees.”
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