Poetry |

“Deathbed”

Deathbed

 

She thought the cancer might have come

from something she heard a man say

in the dark, tenderly. Or from the moon

she said shone upon them when he said it.

Or from the census made

of the entirety of her freckles, or the freckle

that vanished into the quick of her upper lip.

Possibly from the tip of a tongue, from sweat

or saddle leather. Possibly from all that lace.

She thought there was a word somewhere

that was the seed of it, in the furrow

of a sentence that might have been a lie

in a crop that was her life.  She thought,

if she thought about it, she would remember

what it was he said and how

it was it uncoiled within her,

or whether her believing it was the problem.

She never thought she would live forever,

but she knew she would outlive him,

who died a year to the day after he said it,

to whom she gave what she gave without hope,

before he helped her back onto the horse

and walked her back to what she would know.

As important to her as the word or words

she longed to remember, she longed to remember

what could have become of her shoes,

how it was she was barefoot, and what it meant

that she was mesmerized by the sight

of her feet, outside the stirrups,

palely swaying under the moon.

Contributor
Robert Wrigley

Robert Wrigley lives in the woods near Moscow, Idaho.  His most recent book is Box (Penguin, 2017).

Posted in Poetry

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