August 26: Last Words

I woke from a nap less nap than I needed
from two days awake in the hospital with
my twelve year old we weren't out of the woods yet
but I had to sleep

and I woke from a nap and went down to my
kitchen where my mother in law was cooking
because that's what you do in a crisis you
sit or you clean or

you cook: I clean my mother sits his mother
cooks I opened the fridge to find something quick
to eat before I packed a bag to go back
to the hospital,

to the Pediatric ICU and there
at eye level was a telephone number
and his signature and the words I'm sorry
to hear about Maeve

I looked at my oldest she said he had come
by while I slept I was exhausted I took
the paper I couldn't yet but I called three
weeks later, the damned

girlfriend answered I hung up panicked, made a
friend call and she lied to her for me and I
threw the paper out the window of her car,
frustrated, into

the air. It was a good month that passed before
I heard that he was dead, in a hospital
in the ICU, Baby, I could always
see you once I looked