- Burrowing, bulging, it—no, they
- move against her, within her,
- gnawing nearer to things
- she cannot live without—
- organs, bones, synapses,
- memories, senses, clarity.
- .
- "Pray that it's swift."
- .
- I do. I sit beside her,
- praying to these agents of death,
- Move quickly. Finish what you've started.
- There's no going back so
- don't torment her endlessly, OK?
- .
- She'll never again drive us to close doors
- against her endless questions,
- her continuous-loop narrations
- of her every inconsequential thought.
- .
- She'll never again startle me with total recall
- of something I told her when I was fifteen,
- something she clearly wasn't listening to.
- .
- She'll never again amaze us with her innocence
- and generosity, with her willingness
- to step beyond the walls she's lived within
- and accept what to her are anomalies—
- the nonwhite, the nonChristian, the nonstraight.
- .
- She'll never again change the subject to nonsense
- when I'm trying to tell her something
- of world-shaking importance.
- .
- She'll never again dip a hook into fine thread
- and count her way to magical snowflakes
- for far-flung family Christmas trees.
- .
- She'll never again know
- that we are here, beside her.
- .
- It may be the morphine,
- it may be the devourers,
- it may be the exhaustion of the decades,
- but she needs to get shut of
- this besieged and bedeviled body.
- .
- Do your job, rampaging cells.
- Do your job, damn you.
