Daughter at the Hospital

She is

under

wrinkled blankets

trying to breathe

 

The air is thin with weakness

fever heats into

her hair

 

Her eyelids shut

as bare as they were born

down in their wells a storm

of blood and bone

 

The sun falls into evening

leaving me

a silent stone

I stare into her face 

lit yellow as a faded picture

 

She is stiff 

I slowly bend her leg

like a father lifting his sleeping child

She is unable

her limbs become life in my hands

they have no flaw tonight

She is rare 

one body in the world

 

I forget everything

I remember it all from the beginning

I see straight into the unending,

blessed with sorrow

 

I ran out of things

I was just with my blood, my mother

I had the right melody in my head for a day

It may have been years

 

She rode through on a remedy

of prayer infused antibiotic

Tonight I crawled in beside her

under wrinkled blankets

trying to breathe

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