On more than one night I lowered my mother’s rented bed
so it would be level with my futon bed in a room
of my little sister’s house, where my sister and brother-in-law
had made a hospice out of what had been an office.
I laid my head on the place between my mother’s still-warm
arm and chest, closed my eyes, and cried,
and because it was just her and me, I sucked my thumb
in that way children do, where they wrap their pointer finger
over the bridge of their nose. What I saw was a yellow kitchen,
two brown bags of groceries, and a woman
putting the groceries away. No empty cave where a body
had been, no stinging light from Heaven. No group of women
attending the scene. Just cans of soup, pasta sauce, orange juice.
