Karine Leger, Dénouement (acrylic on canvas)
Not on purpose you kept
your death for yourself, stepped
from the shower unaware
bade blood could forget
to answer. Arrhythmia.
Crimeless victim. Your ❤
stopped because your heart
stopped. Hidden until the deed
had spelled itself into hours. Until
you'd missed work, worried
people insufficiently to match
the undoing they encountered,
the few still-damp curls to say
that in the morning the body
had been sitting down to its usual
feast of intention. The wrong
not so much committed as wrought.
***
Two years since your younger brother
took the first turn—broken
ankle, blood clot. Then, your parents
bought four gravesites, looking
to the far future, they thought.
Of course they neglected your husband,
the vows, the silk ties, the house
amongst ivy and so on. At that time
believing in a lesser severity
of love between men, expecting
you'd relinquish such unseemliness
when the weakness of the flesh
no longer held sway. They've since
relented, a marvel I wish you hadn't
had to lose your sight to see.
***
Now, we stand watch
at your mother's beside. Illness
ranging her organs, nothing
particularly nameable. Auto-
immune. We say she's dying
of grief—diagnosis
for a British novel of manners—
but the work is athletic,
impolite. Her face lit
with effort, breath Herculean,
machinery cheering from box seats
as the knee jabs hospital
sheets, as the arms & legs
puppet to center, as the body
racks from arch
to embryonic, unfavored toy
in a toddler's bored hands.
All this for no
final flush of victory—only
the little scripts we scribble
and stuff in each other's pockets:
he and he left without lingering,
she lingered, then left.