Raquel is reading crosswords to a zombie.
Mum’s guesses are in gurgles, rasps, and groans.
Google says that doesn’t mean she’s drowning
So Raquel just writes “EPEE” for thirty down.
She could maybe sleep with breathing machine beeping,
Or even last week’s constant morphine pleading,
But rusalka murmurs prove too much for slumber.
She’s up until the sun comes up and then some.
She gives another dose of meds, lays down –
She wakes up in an hour. Mum does not.
Later, asked for time of death, she’s frantic:
“I KNOW that it was after seven thirty –
HAD to be before eight forty-five.
I think I held her hand – fuck, did I drop it?”
“It’s fine hon, we’ll put 8’o’clock. It’s fine.”
Dad knew as soon as Raq was by his bedside
Before he even cracked open his eyes.
She called me, called my sister, the whole family,
Took command of all things bureaucratic,
Put some form and structure to the waste.
Later, after each of us is solaced,
Raquel and I in bed, mum’s ghost between us,
I hold her like a séance and she
she
“I’m so fucking sorry
I fell
asleep”
and she breaks
note: this is one of a series of poems in a chapbook I’m working on entitled “yellows”. to read them in their intended order, start here.