she?s coughing in the next room

and I can hear

all the phlegm she never spit at them

now heaves and rattles inside her weary chest.

someone should?ve whispered

in her ear one night

someone should?ve told her

none of us were worth the price of

rage turned inside-out

or the fusion of a wound to

the marrow of her bones

her body, angrier than her mind

could ever allow itself to be

shudders now as it grimly turns backwards

feeding on itself

tell me, momma

do I, too, carry the trait?

weight

w e i g h t

weight for me, momma

I am afraid to step toward you

my eyes refuse to witness

dark shadows that gather

in the smiling parts of your face

and when a deeper slumber

paralyses your exhausted legs,

closing your ears to

my midnight pacing, it is only because

I, too cannot bear

to mention what you already sense,

decades of patience gnawing

away at the insides of your bones

rotting you from the inside out,

forcing my reluctant tongue to circle and skirt

leaden words that thicken and

freeze on the tongue,

half-clotted

white blood cell counts and blastic stages

toxic therapies and slender needles

if only we had known what pain could do

the crows are circling

searching for the carrion

I will never abandon to the sky

because no part of you can ever be dead to me

still, these winged dark angels frighten me with

their silent flutterings since

they cannot feed on your thin limbs

without consuming mine

wait

w a i t

wait for me, momma

it?s you and me again, baby

although I cannot yet recall

the internal landscape of her body,

I retreat into troubled sleep

and doze through entire days

as if her life depended on it

scrambling to retrieve embryonic memories,

reaching back with strong fingers

sensing their return to curled and softened stumps

groping blindly for remembrance

of her body?s blueprint breaking

through the barrier sac

that separates her from me,

I need some kind of key

to help rebuild this ravaged,

delicate, infinitely precious place.

in this now/then together/apart place,

we need not speak each other?s hurt because I and I feel wordlessly through

shared flesh and blood and salt.

I digest the rage she swallows

and she feels my shiver in return.

wait for me, momma

I am both here and with you

so curl one hand around your shrunken belly

and cradle my heavier head with the other

I need her as much as I did then

since, once again, I am floating and dreaming and weighting

waiting and wondering if I can live without her.

@EDITRULE: