It’s what did you in, finally,
even after it all left the house
in a fine collection of marching ghost soldiers –
leaving your lungs, or so we thought –
your lungs did not leave it.
Water could not put it out, completely.
Fire is its mother and we always said
you shone brightly from within.
Fire raged within you as you sat
each morning with a cigarette
between your fingers, coupled with coffee the color
of a cat’s eye. It sucked you in over the years,
the leveling of your chest while it rose and fell,
as you coughed, waking up the child in a bundle of worry.
Then, this past January, you got the diagnosis
and began chewing at straws.
The deaths came on as if by permission.
They took your left lung out so your body
collapsed further into itself. How could
empty space hold court in your chest?
I patted your left side gently, afraid you would
implode. But you stopped it, the smoke, the want
that stretched from pubescence, but did you know
that now that you’re gone, your husband has
reclaimed the habit? And the soldiers are back,
the rings and halos and spirals.
He thinks it is like you: after breathing it out he
reaches out…
but it dissipates. He cries tears that roll down
to his neck and they, too, evaporate.

12/31/2006

Posted on 12/31/2006
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