The night season comes

and Earth is mine to hold,

witness its mark

and its gathering decay

while you sleep in an unconscious

darkening – skin around your mouth

turning blue, and inside that open circle,

inner lips peeling rice-paper fine

and your tongue like a dried log, that I keep sponging,

trying to saturate and regain its malleable form.

 

Your eyebrows twitch in what the nurses

promise me is not pain, promised me

you are comfortable

even though

for three days and three nights you

have lingered in a grizzly dehydrated shadow-stasis.

 

These days are like years, ripping away my trust,

my faith, my understanding of mercy,

solidifying the power

of bone-chiselling dread.

 

I love you, more in your helplessness,

in your patience for the final command, lingering,

red sores forming under your eyes,

fingers cold, purple pale and never grasping.

 

I stay with you in that place, even when

I sleep, I never sleep without you with me.

I love you and I hurt for you

and I want your release from this

brutal collapse of your form.

 

Why or even how you are lingering so long,

even the doctor can’t say.

I think you are buffering us from the pain of your loss

I think sometimes maybe mercy burns

hotter than punishment.

 

And these times

life surpasses understanding,

when the bottom current over quicksand thins,

breaking the chrysalis, clearing the way

for an unwanted redemption.

 

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Copyright © 2024 by Allison Grayhurst

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You can listen to the poem by clicking below:

 

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Read whole poem:

https://allisongrayhurst.com/my-mothers-sky/

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