Frannie Lindsay
Bead
I still have the shirt he wore to the doctor
the day she took both his hands
and looked into his milky eyes
and told him
as if it were some kind of blessing.
None of us cried, none of that, instead
we sat in an awkward huddle and skimmed
the scan report, all seven single-spaced pages
making no sense, especially to him,
who swore to God
that a life was a string of beads
made of single bright days,
and all you needed to do to be happy
was thread them, now and then hold your strand
up to whatever light there was, but always
keep a firm grip on the bead
you were passing your red string through
that very moment. Then go back
to your stringing, and go back
again, until they were gone.
After
No one died in your bed.
It is clean today as a plot
of daylight. The sheets
are new, the pillows nestled
like well-nourished children.
The packets of square blue swabs
for your lips, the folded diapers,
the delicate syringes: these
were props. Someone prays
as the wind grabs bone specks
away from her palms. The wind
has other blowing to do.
Someone cries, and the months
don't care. Someone tends
the plants and they bloom.
As if informed, the mail
stops. Then God appears
as a story, or as the breeze
where a story belongs:
you died
in your bed. We came.
We held your face. Summer
came too. We had to
allow her in.
